


Those Were the Best Days of My Life

by Ailorian, quixoticquest



Series: A Lot Can Happen in 27 Years [1]
Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: 90s homophobia, 90s sexism, Bi Richie, Blow Jobs, Fluff and Smut, Frottage, Gay Eddie, Horny Teenagers, Lots of porn with lots of plot, M/M, Making Out, Nude Photos, Post-Graduation, Requited Love, Rimming, Semi-Public Sex, Sharing a Bed, Slurs, To Be Continued, Underage Drinking, Voyeurism, Weed Smoking, angst at the end, but they're of age, dangerous blowjobs, photoshoot, richie's mouth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-09 06:14:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15261189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ailorian/pseuds/Ailorian, https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixoticquest/pseuds/quixoticquest
Summary: The Losers have graduated high school, and Richie decides it's as good a time as any to finally tell Eddie how he feels - three months before they all scatter to the four winds. They try to fit as much boyfriend stuff as they can into the time allotted, but is one summer really enough to make up for all the time they wasted?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be a three part series about Reddie's development through the years that's sort of canon compliant. This first is the longest. Hope you enjoy!

"More!" Richie growled in his best Igor voice, shoulders hunched up and head bent forward so that he could pretend to be shorter than Bill. Their host pursed his lips and raised his brows, careful not to look at the brunet long enough to acknowledge his demand.  
  
"More fire!" Richie added in the same rough voice, and earned a huffed sigh and a laugh this time.  
  
"P-puh-pace yourself," Bill muttered, tipping his drink up and holding it out with a pinched smirk until Richie took it, since he was, apparently, the only one with anything resembling cocktail knowledge. Not that it mattered when one was dumping random increments of soda and whiskey into cups.

Two hours ago they had thrown their mortar boards in the air and turned their backs on Derry High School forever. Now, while everyone else had fancy dinners with their families or crowded into some house for a huge party, seven losers piled into the Denbrough’s backyard for a modest bonfire. It was probably super lame, but excitement and affection prevented them from seeing it as anything less than a group of friends celebrating the finale of shitty childhoods, and gearing up for the beginning of one more summer.  
  
"Where's my backpack?" Richie muttered to himself, deciding there were a few binders full of loose leaf that needed sacrificing to Loki. A quick route around the circle, bent at the waist to see into the shadows caused by several sets of long legs, Richie let out an _ah-ha!_ and reached between Eddie's ankles to retrieve the discarded bag. Set to task, only the sound of the hypochondriac’s yelp gave any indication that he had lost his balance from the invasion, stumbling into Beverly beside him.

"Why can't you just say please like a normal fucking human being?" Eddie snapped. Before Richie could retreat, or even offer his most clever retort, Eddie stuck his foot out, and flipped the Trashmouth over with the toe of his sneaker, far too easily. Bouncing his head a bit dramatically against the lawn, Richie stared up with wide eyes, his mouth gaped around a startled gasp before Eddie's foot clamped him down and there was nothing to do but relax into the grass, like an abused turtle - backpack strap clutched in one hand.  
  
"Plus dur, ma chérie," the brunet gasped out in his thickest French accent, playing it up like his breath had been knocked out and he was dying, even lifting his hand to reach desperately toward Bev. The finicky redhead was merciless, snickering into her hand instead of offering any help, so Richie set his chilled hands against Eddie's jean clad calf, sliding higher in search of body heat and the barrier of acceptable physical contact.  
  
"Come on spaghetti man, ain’tcha cold? I'm tryna feed the fire!"

"The fire in your pants, more like it." Even spouting such scathing words, Eddie was quick to let him go, relenting the press of his sneaker just in time to prevent damage to his ribcage.

"I can't believe you brought your backpack, this is supposed to be a safe space," he chided as Richie climbed to his feet. "And you never even have to open it again for as long as you live."

"Yeah, well, how do _you_ smuggle liquor?" Richie demanded, mock-haughty as he straightened, brushing imagined dirt off himself (tempted to wipe his hands on Eddie just to see if it would make him run screaming to the nearest soap dispenser). Rubbing his thumb against his sternum - where the pressure of the offending shoe had been greatest - the brunet pinched his mouth into a taunting smirk.  
  
"Besides, there’s one last delving invasion for this deflowered venus," he intoned dramatically, his voice dropping an octave as his chin tipped down, though there wasn't enough glow from this angle to highlight the sharp angles of his face. "We must cast it into the fire!"  
  
"Paper o-only," Bill countered from across the circle. "I'm n-not pulling pa-paper clips out of th-the pit tomorrow."

Arms crossed, Eddie stared at Richie, tight-lipped, shaking his head for as long as he decided to be disapproving. When he finally opened his mouth to say something, Beverly to beat him to the punch with an _oh hold on!_ as she gave him her cup and hurried away from the fire. Sure enough, she was after her bag, rifling through papers she didn't bother to keep in folders, and then Ben next to her with his backpack, and Mike, and so on and so forth.

Richie held Eddie's gaze for as long as it was on him, even as the others chirped and milled around, spurred by his zealous declaration. After years of dumping their bags into the trashcan on the way out of school, there had to be an escalation for this finite finale, and there was no better cleansing of their collective slates. Eddie’s resolute expression twitched, finally.

"Okay, okay, don't start without me," he half-shouted, to no one in particular, dancing back and forth with the cups a while before setting them gently down in the grass to dash off into the late evening haze. Ah, yes, Eddie Kaspbrak. If his friends all jumped off a bridge, he’d do a swan dive.  
  
The fog was thin enough not to be menacing, but still looked heavy in the wake of Eddie’s departure while Richie stared, feeling a bit abandoned despite the majority remaining within proximity. A glance around was enough to know that, for a moment, he wouldn’t be missed. A shuffle and thump echoed as he dropped his own bag, and a heartbeat later the brunet had taken off after Eddie, long legs pumping to catch up before the intended retrieval was accomplished.  
  
Most of the lights were out in the Denbrough residence, leaving the windows entirely dark but for the street light several feet away, when Richie got to the front yard. Eddie had made it all the way to his mom’s car, that she'd so graciously let him use for the evening, wedged between Stan's and Ben's. Jogging to make up the difference, Richie’s fingers pinched Eddie's sleeve, tugging incessantly instead of gripping him by the arm to spin him.  
  
"Hey, Eds?" he murmured, overcome with a wave of dizziness that could have only been caused by the teeter-tottering resolution he had reached mere days ago. He couldn’t even find it in him to feel bad when Eddie gasped, surprised (though, when did he ever feel bad for anything really?).

Eddie huffed, visibly startled, even though Richie couldn’t quite see the telltale flush across round cheeks in this light. He’d just have to imagine it. "Jesus, Richie. I was gonna be right back," he stated.

"Yeah," Richie agreed simply, thoughts racing fast enough to become blurred - at that rate, his mind may as well have been blank. For too long, he stared down the handful of inches that still separated them in height, and the foot or so of arm length that separated them by distance. His glasses slipped in microscopic increments down the bridge of his nose, threatening with every thump of his terrified heart to slide right off.  
  
His hand didn't drop from Eddie's sleeve, despite garnering the attention he had wanted. In fact, his fingers tightened, as if the pinch of thumb and knuckle might prevent the other from escaping. Failing utterly to open his mouth around a single fucking word (for once!), Richie shifted his weight forward instead, a half step slide of his shoe against the pavement enough to cinch the gap between them closed until Eddie was nearly pressed against the car.

“What’s wrong, Rich?”  
  
Richie knew in an instant that if he stepped back now he wouldn't get another chance. Something akin to the flight or fight mechanism gripped him and there was no stopping the rise of his hands, long, cold fingers clamping down around the angles of Eddie's still-soft jawline, finger tips barely brushing chestnut locks. In the same movement, Richie's head bent low, shoulders tense as he drew the shorter brunet up toward him, and planted their mouths together with all the desperate alacrity of a fish gasping around empty air.

Eddie fell entirely stock still - quick and complete enough that Richie opened his eyes (which has pinched shut as soon as he made contact) just to make sure he wasn't caught in some weird day dream involving an over-sized doll or the mirror. There was Eddie, soft amber eyes near black in the low evening light, wide and unblinking, like he had been stunned or frozen in time.  
  
One could only drag their lips across limp and unresponsive flesh for so long before it became not only creepy but the wrong side of coercive, and after a three count Richie lifted his head again, ducking his chin against his chest to avoid meeting that shocked gaze. It took conscious thought and decision making to drop his hands away from soft, warm skin, and all the while he fought for air in his lungs - almost managing to be amused by the irony of his recent shenanigans. Talk about taking his breath away.  
  
That was probably all the answer he needed, right? If someone wanted to be kissed, they were usually inclined to kiss back. Richie laughed, figuring his last life line might be passing it off as a joke, and lifted his hands to point finger guns at Eddie as he retreated a step or two, ready to sprint back to the fire and act like he had never left the circle.

After what felt like an eternity, in which Richie aged and died and got reincarnated all over again, Eddie huffed with guttural aggravation. "Not funny, Richie," he warned, hitting him squarely in the chest with very little force, before turning and bending to unlock the driver side door. "Beep beep. Every beep beep. All the beeps."

"Yeah," Richie agreed again, reduced to his most basic noises as grunts, sighs, and chortles fell out of the useless mouth that had just _kissed Eddie Kaspbrak_ for the first and final time. His lips burned enough to have him scraping both between the pinch of his teeth, arms dropping to his sides.   
  
Turning on a heel, the brunet slowly spun himself in place, limbs listless and useless and almost unresponsive until he caught himself facing the other direction and promptly stopped short. Just the thought - without even the time to imagine how everything would pan out - of returning to the fire was enough to stall his movements, bile rising in his otherwise locked tight throat before he swallowed thickly, fingers curling into fists at his side.  
  
It was safer to let it be a joke, indulge the ten weeks that stood between him and everyone else's start-of-school dates for that life consuming adventure of voluntary tertiary schooling. Between right now and the scattering of the six winds that was guaranteed to leave him alone in the big bad world.

But when the fuck did he ever play it safe?  
  
"’Cause it wasn't a joke," Richie muttered, all too aware of every word that had managed to pass between them in the last few minutes. In the last _one_ minute, actually, even if every fleeting moment felt like a day or a lifetime. "Honestly, Eds. All the effort I put into my comedy."

That got Eddie looking at him, ducking out from under the low doorway of Sonia’s car, backpack and keys in hand. Richie could almost see the gears churning in the little nerd’s brain, through his eyes, even shadowed by his brow. It couldn’t have been _that_ mysterious a statement, though. Richie was pretty forward. Not so much in the last however many years regarding this one issue, but still.

"Well if it wasn't a joke, then why'd you do it?" Eddie asked. His voice was uncharacteristically small.

Aiming for a shrug, Richie pulled his shoulders up to his ears, curled fists rising just enough to slide them into his pockets, knuckles first despite the grating of the denim against them. How many hours had he spent going over how to do it in his head? Phrasing and tone and facial expression. Not that he could settle on anything resembling the best method. If only because no matter what, he couldn't quite imagine a reaction (not a good one anyway). _Beep beep_ was, all things considered, the mildest of his concerns.  
  
"’Cause I wanted to," he answered, pinching one eyes closed as he chanced a glance over his own shoulder, body sagging in defeat or surrender or - something. "’Cause I have wanted to, for a long time. ‘Cause your mouth always looks like it tastes like bubblegum. ‘Cause I'm running out of time to risk it." Oh, sure, now he had words.  
  
"’Cause I needed to see if you wanted me to," Richie added, a bit wistful while his cheeks pinched into a self pitying smirk that he his by facing forward again, head hung just a bit as he kicked his toes into the grass. "Just _if_ , you know? Nothing wrong with ‘nah’. Don't let me spoil the summer, okay?"

This had gone a lot better in his head. Even the worst case scenario was kinda funny, in a masochistic way. But this was something else, unexpected, altogether. Who knew the two of them could pull off so much tense silence?

"Richie-" The first word that came out of Eddie’s mouth. Sounding choked off, breathless. “Choked of and breathless”, like, way to make things awkward, I can’t speak to you again, “choked off and breathless”? Fuck, Richie hoped not.

"Richie!” This time, Eddie was loud, almost scolding. “Get over here! You can't just kiss me and then go mope around with your back to me. What, are you some kind of pussy?”

A sharp _tch_ sound escaped his teeth at the admonishment, but Richie turned to look over his shoulder again, turning in place this time until he stood perpendicular to the other, brows just a bit pinched as he tried to swallow the lump that was growing in his throat again from nothing but the way Eddie said his name. It was, in fact, quite a bit harder to muster his gumption when dark eyes were burning into his, jaw and brow set in harsh, tense lines.  
  
"A pussy who knows what rejection looks like," Richie said, just a bit defensive about that being the response to his big reveal, but then, what else could he expect? It's not like he knew how to be gentle on the let down either. Despite a general desire to ignore the command, the brunet found himself sidling forward idly, fists still in his pockets while he fought to keep his head up from staring at his shoes. Though this time he stopped just out of arm's' reach.  
  
"Look, contrary to popular belief, I do know how to take no for an answer. I know how not to be a dick about stuff. M'sorry for tossin’ it atcha but you know it's like we're all standing on the docks ready to get on boats going in all sorts of directions and the world is big, Eds, you know? I dunno what's gonna happen next and I just needed a question answered before I could move forward. You don't have to wo-”

"Oh my god, shut up!" Eddie snapped, before Richie’s stupid rant could turn into a monologue. Without warning, he reached forward to grab a fistful of Richie's shirt collar.

Considering the glint of sharp keys and a heavy backpack in each of Eddie's hands, nobody could blame Richie for the slight flinch that gripped him just as the shorter brunet did. A headbutt seemed more likely than anything, which was why his head reeled back - because apparently taking it to the nose and chin was better than the forehead. Only it wasn't Eddie's skull smashing into his.

It was the same soft mouth as before, harsh and insistent. There was a nip of teeth and the slick damp of parted lips on his for about four solid heart beats before his brain caught on to the signals his body was sending.  
  
An instant later, Richie surged forward, ceasing only at the slight bounce of a rebound that came from squishing Eddie against the side of his own vehicle. His knuckles stung from the scrape of the denim as he clutched the shorter brunet against him, drawing Eddie forward and up even as he bowed to press closer himself.  
  
There was just enough alcohol in his system to make the press of his knee between narrow thighs seem like a good idea on all fronts, his body warmed from the core outward while his palms slid higher, arm circling a soft waist while the other hand carded fingers through soft hair. Tipping Eddie's head to one side, Richie turned the other way, licking at the seam of plush, pursed lips, seeking entry. Eddie moaned beneath him, in a completely unfamiliar way. It wasn’t pain, or annoyance, and it was almost enough to make Richie melt like butter on pancakes.

Delving curiously (possessively) into Eddie's mouth, Richie fought for every breath, his head dipping forward to chase upon a retreat - only to realize his friend was trying to withdraw. Maybe for air, he thought simply, drinking in his own cool breaths when he lifted away, hands continuing to roam, taking in every inch of Eddie Kaspbrak topography that he was allowed to map.  
  
If it wasn't for the curl of nimble fingers still gripping him by the open edges of his casual-ized button down, Richie might have gotten nervous, especially the shorter brunet looking so resolute, struggling for words.

“I’m not-” Eddie huffed, and started over. Now Richie didn’t feel so bad for failing to speak before. “I’m not fooling around with you in front of Bill’s house!”

It took real effort for Richie not to guffaw with a mixture of amusement and relief, lips twisting around his teeth in an unstoppable smile.

"What about Stan's house?" he asked instead, excess air held at bay simply because he couldn't quite trust himself not to keen some sort of high pitched frequency. Frankly, it was a miracle he was still here - a miracle made of Eddie's arms - while their friends lay just a few dozen paces away, just waiting to be bragged to and celebrated with.

“No, that’s worse!”

Without Eddie's lips against his, it seemed a lot of words were trying to throw themselves out from between Richie’s teeth at the same time. A smirk quirked the corner of his mouth while things like _I'm telling Stan you said that_ and _Easy on the helium_ caught against each other enough not to make it through the (admittedly, rather generous) opening. Besides, with hickory eyes glimmering up at him, his mind sorta flipped toward a popcorn channel and then froze.

“Fuck, Richie,” Eddie breathed, almost admonishing. The expletive (and maybe a little bit his name in that breathless tone) was enough to have Richie swallowing again, sucking in a breath while he fought not to grind forward, bury his face in the shorter brunet's shoulder and just groan. The heat of Eddie's legs on either side of his bent knee was already tantalizing (and distracting) enough, never mind the subtle cacophony of movement that was the body beneath his splayed palms - all tensing muscles and fluttering pulse. Eddie was on him again before he could think, just a push, a press, the slide of slick lips that left him gasping the moment he was released again, half-stepped back to keep their collective balance.

“How long is a long time?” Eddie asked, effectively catching Richie like a deer in headlights.

"Well, I'm sure someone will come looking after a few minutes,” he said, glancing back toward the house. “It doesn't take long to walk to your car, after all. Bill's yard is like the second smallest on this street, but also you tend to take forever so who knows and I dunno if anyone noticed I left yet but if we stay missing for too long you know Stan's paranoid ass is gonna get worried."

“No you idiot, not in general.” Eddie looked just about ready to swat Richie, despite the heated culmination of seconds ago. Richie would forever blame the long column of a pale throat that was exposed by the impatient, put-upon tilt of Eddie's chin for not grasping the question at first. But the important part, after all, was that the shorter brunet remained in his grasp, pressed together by the tangle of their limbs and not quite sharing air while Richie fought to keep his glasses up and his head down enough to watch Eddie's face for every minute change.

"How long have you wanted to kiss me? Because - well! You coulda fooled me! I mean you talk about tits and vag enough to put the whole football team to shame. I had no idea you'd even - I dunno. You know. Bat the same team as me.”

For a moment, Richie felt foolish for not anticipating something like this. Then again, he hadn't managed to imagine _anything_ , despite over a decade of knowing the squirrelly little jackass currently clutched against his chest.  
  
"Not to split hairs, but I'm purdy sure that my vag to dick reference ratio is one to one, unless you exclude references to my own dick, in which case, I might concede the point. And tits will always be beautiful whether you have any or not." Brows rising, Richie nodded once, the corners of his mouth pinching down confidently.  
  
What was the question again?  
  
"And anyway, I can't remember," he finished, doing his best to loop back to the original point since Eddie liked to think and chat on a fairly linear basis. "S'far back as I know, maybe always. That's like asking how many times I jacked it today. I can't keep track of that shit."

"That long?" Eddie asked incredulously. Richie wondered if he had answered wrong. "That long! Okay I could understand if it was Bill or something and not me. But I've been out for two years! There is no excuse!"  
  
Huffing to the point where Richie wondered if the inhaler was gonna have to come out, Eddie let his head fall back against the car, expression tense. "Dammit all."

"Whadaya want me to say? 'Oh, Eds, I just realized an hour ago I'm hot and hungry for ya'?" Richie demanded, a bit astounded that they were wasting perfectly good kissing time having this discussion. Weren't the credits supposed to roll while they faded into the sunset at this point? Maybe the sun already being down made a difference. _No excuse_ almost felt more like a dare than it did a reaming, and Richie took a deep breath like he was about to sigh, despite the mumbling tone of his voice as it finally emerged.  
  
"Two years. Not like I haven't been since freshman year but everyone sorta glazed over that announcement, so I figured it didn't matter up until you followed and I'm definitely not bothered by the difference in attitudes because let's be real, you're extremely sensitive and soft hearted compared to me but I'm starting to think none of you took me seriously which completely ignores the fact that I'm a sick fuck with no filter or shame or ambition that ain't worth the gum I stuck to your shoe twenty minutes ago or the fleeting weeks before you forget all about me under the approaching pile of term papers and new better more interesting and supportive friends."  
  
His words trailed off in a pinched wheeze, not because Richie was choking up or anything but definitely because he had run out air, having failed to realize he needed more before being too close to the end of the sentence to bother. Only Eddie's continued presence in the circle of his arms gave the brunet anything resembling a confidence that he had made the right choice. Though with those big brown doe eyes glaring pointedly up at him, there was some wiggle room for that certainty, and Richie grinned impishly, as if he could banish all that concern with another quip.  
  
"Now that I know you're into garbage, though," he murmured, trailing off with a small shake of his head as he tipped forward, intent on claiming that soft little pink mouth again - only to be stopped by Eddie’s hands against his face, belongings clattering down to the pavement.

"You're not garbage," Eddie said fiercely, contradicting past sentiments whether he realized or not. "How could you say that? How could you say any of that? Maybe not so much the first stuff, maybe that's my bad, but fuck, Rich, no one's got me pegged like you do. Not even Bill or Stan. All the shit you put me through too. You've made it completely, fucking utterly impossible to forget you."

Richie felt his face pinch a bit, fighting more vulnerable expressions in favor of twisted confusion and incredulity and dissension, but all of that fell away from still-silent lips when the shorter brunet inched up to claim him instead, more chaste than he ever could have imagined.  
  
Not too keen on stopping that, Richie closed his eyes, relaxing into the restrictive grasp even as he tightened his own. Despite the closed, soft purse of Eddie's lips, he was more than tempted to press past that soft barrier for another, deeper taste - and it took an excited whoop from the backyard followed by some merciless shushing for Richie to lift his head instead.  
  
"Come on," he murmured, then, taking Eddie's hand in his to draw it away from his face. "You gotta be in bed by ten anyway, right? No point wasting a perfectly good campfire." Besides, the trees outside the Kaspbrak house made for some easy and stealthy invasions.

“Yeah, okay, fair enough,” Eddie conceded, breaking away to retrieve his keys and bag from the ground. Letting go after an encounter like this was about as difficult as inhaling underwater - Richie’s body just didn't want to do it, for a lot of obvious reasons. Still, when Eddie pushed off, he released, sliding his hands back into his pockets in an effort to keep them to himself for a bit. Luckily, it wasn't too dark to admire the curve of Eddie's pert little ass.  
  
They walked side by side, bumping elbows a few times while Richie remained almost painfully aware of the length of his steps and Eddie got distracted rifling through his backpack. The fire (noticeably larger now, even from the distance, especially with Bill walking the perimeter stamping out stray tendrils of flame) lit them as they came around the corner of the house. Richie felt himself swell with excitement at the sight of the losers club in all its debauched glory.  
  
"Guess who just took spaghetti man's mouth virginity!" he announced shamelessly as they rejoined the circle. Quite pleased with himself, Richie yanked his hands from his pockets again and launched them into the air with all the enthusiasm of a champion Olympian.  
  
Having grown accustomed to recognizing the moment he had gotten himself into trouble, Richie could feel Eddie's scathing gaze like a brand, and had just turned to face it when all that unbridled attention was yanked suddenly away - dragging his own with it. A triumphant Mike was already accepting a crumpled dollar bill from a miserable Stan.  
  
"You knew about this?!" Eddie exclaimed, careful not to shriek outright.  
  
"Depends on what you mean by _know_ ," Stan confessed. "If you mean, could we spot the pining from a mile away, then yes. But no one ever said anything...sober anyway."  
  
The look on Eddie's face might have been enough to make up for whatever bet Stan just lost. A chuckle bubbled out of Richie at the sight, distracted from a greedy quip by the word _pining_ .  
  
"Am I that obvious?" he murmured, mostly to himself, and remained utterly incapable of keeping the proud grin off his face as he bent to reclaim his own backpack.  
  
"Yes," Bill answered, a bit louder and succinct enough that his throat didn't have time to stall before his teeth clicked shut, his mouth pinched in a resigned smile that dimpled one cheek. Richie lifted his left hand to flip him off, while the right tossed his first fist full of loose leaf into the tall orange flames.  
  
"I'd like a toast, or a shot. Does anyone know how to spit fire? I bet I could do it." Good excuse as any to go looking for his lost cup and a not yet emptied bottle.

“No one knows how to do that,” Eddie stated, chucking handfuls of his own into the fire. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

“Yes, dear," Richie called over his shoulder, head tipped back more like he was shouting at the sky than answering his recently kissed friend. Thoughts swirled around the inherent change that had either just occurred, or was irrevocably in the making. Not just between him and Eddie but the losers as a whole. And not just tonight but the rest of the summer and possibly the rest of their lives.  
  
Unable to cope with the burst of consciousness that came with acknowledgement of that none too distant hurdle, Richie took up the bottle of amber rum and hoisted it over his head in mockery of the toast coming together on his tongue. A much simpler thought strand.  
  
"To tits, dicks, and pumped up kicks!" the trashmouth shouted, heedless of sleeping neighbors as he tipped the bottle against his lips and took three deep chugs. The fire warmed liquor burned all the way down his throat, settling heavy in his belly as he glanced around the circle, pleased to see the handful of other drinks following his lead.

After his toasting, Richie couldn't be surprised when his head felt heavy and spinny at the same time, and resigned himself to a seat on a particularly generous log that supported his skinny ass when tipped up onto a flat side. When Eddie settled into a seat as well, the brunet couldn't quite resist moving his a little closer, ignoring a few impulses only because there was no guarantee he could do it gracefully and the last thing he wanted tonight was to knock the asthmatic in the face with his elbow.  
  
When, finally, the dreaded beep of Eddie’s watch alarm sounded around the quieted circle, Richie felt dread course through him, as if this were the last night he would ever see Eddie again. As the shorter brunet stood, he followed, uncertain of how far he would accompany his freshly kissed friend but intent upon it nonetheless. And if his long limbs flailed a bit as he meandered around the circle, well, that was fine.

“Sorry, guys,” Eddie said. “You know how it is.”  
  
"Come on, spaghetti man, I'll get you home safe!" Richie declared confidently, slinging an arm around narrow shoulders with a new sort of exuberance.

"But is you who I need safe keeping _from_ ," Eddie insisted. A chorus of sincere "see you, Eddie"s followed them out to the front yard. Stumbling toward the car was more indicative of Richie’s own intoxication than anything, but he indulged every moment he could keep his grip on Eddie, even if it wasn't quite the grip his trying-to-wander hands wanted.

They made it all the way into the car, before anything drastic happened. Richie sat shotgun, pulling the door closed against his knee.

"What, you gonna walk back to Bill's from my place?" Eddie prodded, sitting with the key in his hand. "You know what's gonna happen when we pull up, if my mom's sitting on the porch - ‘cause she's done that."

Richie found himself giggling a bit hysterically before he could answer. "I'll scoonch down," he burbled eventually, demonstrating by sliding down until his knees hit the door and then tipping his head against his cinched up shoulder before glancing at Eddie, expectant of acceptance despite still being able to see through all the windows.  
  
"Or you can let me out a couple doors down and I'll meet you in bed?" he added, brows wriggling suggestively. The prospect of being sent back to the fire wasn't the most daunting of alternatives (or consequences) but with such a recent and raw reveal, and so little time to indulge the benefits of the same, Richie couldn't quite fathom a gentle resignation. It was against his nature anyway. Reaching across the bench to set a hand on Eddie's thigh - as much for balance as an excuse to touch - and leaning up to tip his head invitingly, though, was (at least for this moment) the entirety of his nature.

Much to his delight, Eddie took the hint, closed the distance, and kissed him. There was a strange, warm sort of smugness that suffused his already heated blood when their lips brushed together. Hard pressed not to imagine he was coaxing a startled rabbit forward, Richie held as still as he could, jaw working just enough to get a taste of the hoppy drinks Eddie had been sipping all evening while their lips slid against each other.  
  
“Hey, Rich.” The lilt of Eddie's voice around the his name was enough to have Richie leaning back a bit - more to get a look at his something-slightly-different-from-a-friend's face, seeking answers in familiar lines and soft angles.

“Can we at least, like, pretend I’m not leaving in a couple months? Like, no rush, take it slow. We don’t have to fuck now. I’m not even sure we should…”  
  
"Sure, Eds," Richie answered quietly, trying to swallow the anxiety that danced through him with the realization that he was pressing a barrier he hadn't meant to approach so suddenly in the first place. Eddie was right, after all - even the looming time limit wasn't an excuse to rush anything, and the last thing he wanted was to leave either of them (but maybe especially Eddie) disappointed in their time together. "No worries, I'm not gonna jump your bones all at once. I'm a classy gal, we should at least go to dinner first." Managing all that without a stammer or a slur (Richie thought), he beamed, sitting up enough to steal a kiss again before finally dropping back into his own seat. After a contemplative pause, he set a hand on the door, hesitating only long enough to glance back before he added,  
  
"You want me to stay here?"

Eddie smiled, face rimmed by the dim coming from the street lamp. "I think so. Just this time."  
  
Richie chuckled before finally pulling the handle and gripping both sides of the door to haul himself out. Wondering whether Eddie was the type to appreciate a good ass, he turned when he was upright enough to be considered standing, and bent to tuck his head in the door for a murmured farewell, and promises of a super soon reunion. If he had to fight (or charm) Mrs. K on the way in, well, so be it.  
  
The door clanked as he swung it shut, and Richie stood in the street long enough for the junker to roll away and disappear around the nearest corner, before finally turning on a heel. Hands in his pockets, he approached a quiet fire, dropping down into the grass when he missed his log.  
  
"Back already?" Stan asked, managing to sound inordinately prim despite the dangerous tilt of his cup and the slump of his spine as he rested heavily against Bill's knee.  
  
"Uh, yeah," Richie answered, a petulant lilt to his otherwise wry tone. "This drank ain't gonna suck itself!"

It took Bev falling asleep against his shoulder and then slumping backwards with enough gravitational force to wake herself up for the losers minus one to realize it was probably time to go to bed. Ben was sprawled in the grass between Richie's spread legs and the last glimmering embers of their fire. Mike was the only one still upright of his own volition, staring a bit vacantly into the glow and tapping an aimless rhythm onto his cup while he hummed low notes, but Richie couldn't follow any melody. Bill was half braced against the farmboy's back and Stan's side, where he was curled up in the fetal position. A groan was the first noise Stanley offered when Bill moved to stand, apparently intent upon not passing the rest of the waning morning hours in his yard.  
  
"Come on," Richie murmured, taking Bev to her feet just so she could help hoist Ben upright, and utterly unable to handle the fact that he was at least a medalist as far as coherent and functional went right now.  
  
At least he didn't have a car to retrieve in the morning, he thought, following Bill with Ben hanging off his side and Stan stumbling behind them into the house. Mike took to his vehicle with a wave over his head, convinced he could make it home and that his own bed was the superior option. The rest of the Denbroughs were asleep enough that even the bang and slide of the back door didn't stir the house, and Richie abandoned his half-conscious friends to the comforts of a basement sofa.  
  
If asked, Richie might claim that home was his intended destination, with his own set of parents potentially at least mildly concerned about his eventual return, though he had told them not to wait up. By the time the slap of his shoes against pavement penetrated the fog of a wandering, intoxicated mind enough to spare a glance at his surroundings, though, Richie was only a few doors down from the Kaspbrak residence, and couldn't help a slightly ironic chortle before taking a deep breath - aiming for functional sobriety.  
  
The tree outside Eddie's bedroom window got easier to climb with every inch that the brunet's lanky body stretched, and Richie reached up for his anchor branch with nothing more than his tiptoes. Hauling himself feet first into the towering oak, he shifted, crawled, and flopped from one limb to the next, until the gap between branch and ledge was all that separated him from his favorite hypochondriac.

Knocking was a good way to get Mrs. K involved. Fortunately, Eddie's lock had been broken the last time Richie threw himself across the gap like a human bridge, hands caught on the glass and full weight shoving it upwards, which is exactly what he did now. If it weren't for the armchair full of clothes that weren't quite dirty enough for the bin or clean enough for the drawers, Eddie might have woken up to a bloody brunet and a clatter of flailing limbs, but as it turned out Richie stuck the landing well enough to kick his shoes off on his way to the oversized bed across the room.  
  
"Don't get too handsy I'm just here for the blankets," he murmured softly, a hand on the edge of the mattress to steady himself.

Eddie jolted awake with a gasp, and Richie couldn’t help but feel a little guilty, since that’s the last thing he intended. Half-asleep, it took Eddie a moment to register what was happening.

“Richie?” His voice was low, rumbling through his throat. Eddie unfurled himself rather gingerly, lifting the duvet open like a sail. "Is the party over?"

A debate about whether sleeping in jeans was worth setting Eddie on edge or not was abandoned with the offer of the blankets, and Richie dove beneath them, unwilling to miss that split second opportunity to shoot the gap. He was only a little bit dew damp anyway, smelling no doubt like rum and wet grass and campfire smoke.  
  
"Yeah, bunch of lightweights in bed," Richie murmured in answer, painfully aware of the silence in the house while his ears piqued as far as they could reach. Getting caught still technically had all the same consequences, but even the shameless trashmouth didn't want to find out what finding her son in bed with another man would do to Mrs. K's already tenuous and begrudging tolerance of Eddie's social life.  
  
Tucking himself around the shorter body, Richie buried his face against Eddie's shoulder, taking slow breaths while his cold nose burned against warm skin. It took some shifting and adjustment to get them both settled comfortably, and then only their breathing sounded over the usual creaking of an old house. It was the perfect end to an amazing evening, and sleep found him just right.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure all the early 90s pop culture stuff lines up quite right, but that's okay. Don't @ me just enjoy the 90's nostalgia.

All things considered, Eddie slept well, for once. Richie was an amalgam of rough and soft textures, but nothing uncomfortable, especially wrapped around Eddie’s almost bare body. He slept engulfed in that solid warmth through the night, nestled back into the curve of Richie's chest rather easily. Some things never changed.

Eventually, he became half-aware of the sun pouring through his window, and Eddie remained content as long as he was facing away, properly shielded by blanket and body. 

Until his mom banged on his door, and gave him a heart attack.    
  
"Eddie? I told you not to lock your door overnight."    
  
Warning alarms flashed behind his eyes and Eddie rustled awake, forcing himself to be aware of his surroundings. The last thing he needed was everything going tits up not even twenty-four hours after it happened.Richie was stirring, but that wasn't good enough, so Eddie planted his hand on his shoulder to shake him into the land of the living.   
  
"Edward Kasprak!"   
  
"Sorry! I just woke up. I'm, uh, naked. Let me put something on." Sonia went on about she was the first one and only one who's ever seen him naked anyway, or something, whatever, while Eddie leaned over to bustle Richie out of bed. "Get in the closet," he whispered viciously, remorseless. If he just tossed Richie on the floor at this point, so be it.   


“Closet?” Richie echoed dumbly, stumbling and groaning the whole way over, exhausted  _ and _ hungover. Just Eddie’s luck. The last thing he needed was Richie puking in his closet. “But I just got out.”

At least an exhausted  _ and  _ hungover Richie was a compliant Richie, who folded himself into the closet seconds before Eddie snapped the doors shut. The irony was not lost on him, but there was a reason it was a metaphor, and it was all he could manage for now. Luckily his mom was above room checks at this age. Not all her rules were totalitarian bullshit.   
  
Frantic and spry, Eddie hopped into his pajama pants, at least to keep his excuse a little bit truthful,  _ and  _ so he wouldn't have to face his mom in his tighty whities. Just when he thought everything would be fine as long as Richie didn’t vomit all over his shirts, the big pair of worn sneakers by the window caught Eddie’s attention - and they certainly weren’t his. Too big, and Sonia would know for sure. Sprinting across the room with his pants halfway up his legs, he kicked Richie’s sneakers under the bed, and almost rolled an ankle in the process.

Satisfied with the illusion of emptiness in his room, and his own state of dress, Eddie unlocked the door, and tried his very best to make opening it only a crack acceptable. "Morning, Mom."   
  
“Do you have any laundry?” she asked, after a moment spent peering over Eddie’s shoulder.

“No. I’m good.”

“Okay. You should get dressed. It’s not right for a high school graduate to sleep past noon.”

Jesus, was it that late already? “Yeah, you’re right. Sorry.”

“And don’t sleep naked! You’ll catch cold. I can’t trust you all the way off at college by yourself if you do foolish things like that, Eddie bear.”

With that, she relented, abandoning Eddie to take care of the laundry basket balanced in her hands. He didn't roll his eyes until she was gone, but he rolled them hard, and wished he didn't have to rely on her financially.  
  
The coast was clear, so he locked the door again, and moved to the closet to liberate his friend. He found Richie tucked between his ironed button down shirts, swaying like he was gonna be sick. Somehow, just the sight of him was a relief.   
  
"You okay there, buddy?" Eddie asked, leaning down toward him with his hands on his knees. Head bent against his legs, Richie gave a silent thumbs up, and that was all he needed. Before the poor trashmouth could even attempt a coherent sentence, Eddie ran across the room to retrieve his wastebasket, just in case.

***

"I'll pick you up around seven for our date, on Wednesday," Richie had said when Eddie shoved him out the window that morning - afternoon, rather. It was all so fast that Eddie had no time to really process the shocking reality of it all. Come Wednesday, though, he had processed alright, and it was like taking a freight train to the face.

The only thing more embarrassing than trying to gussy up for Richie Tozier was constantly reminding himself that he didn't  _ have  _ to gussy up for Richie Tozier. Or at least he didn't have to freak out about it so much. But that’s exactly what Eddie did, fretting over every shirt he owned, as if Richie could possibly care one way or the other. 

At least it wasn't as bad as asking his mom if he could go out Friday night, and getting the chosen curfew that would no doubt be enforced until the very end of the summer. She was at least more lenient since school had ended, but looking at his watch the whole night was always such a drag.   
  
Eddie finally settled on simplicity. It wasn't prom or anything, they had seen each other in their underwear and everything in between, and before Sonia demanded anything else of him, he hurried out the door for this dumb outing. Well, dumb when he thought about it too hard on one end, but sweet and surprising when he thought about it too hard on the other.   
  
Richie told Eddie he would have this Chevy pickup he had been fixing with his dad up and running for the big day, so they wouldn’t have too mooch off any parents’ cars (or Bill’s). Even with little else in the way of description, he didn’t quite expect Richie to roll up in the grossest piece of machinery he had seen in his entire life. Rusting between areas of dull red paint, chugging air like it was on life support.

But Eddie was trying to be tolerant, so he didn't say anything.  
  
"Heeey, spaghetti man, you're looking awful pretty this evening. How much for the night? I just got my allowance!" Richie grinned from the open window, jerking a bit as he came to a harsh stop. Eddie tried not to think about how Richie got his license only a couple weeks ago. Long after the rest of them, but just in time for prom.   
  
"You can't afford me," he stated simply, climbing into the passenger's seat  _ without _ taking the little plastic package of Kleenex out of his pocket to provide a barrier between the handle and his hand. "But I'm on strike from my pimp so I don't care what you do with me.”

"What did Bill do this time?" Richie asked, lips quirking into a tilted smile. It was hard for Eddie not to smile back, but his nerves managed to keep him grounded. Richie looked no different than he did any other day of the week. Eddie could only wonder if he had worked himself up in front of the closet (though he supposed, he’d probably had enough of closets, given the morning after graduation).

“Where are we going?” Edde asked, buckling his seatbelt.   
  
"You'll see," Richie answered simply, throwing them back into gear without warning. Eddie caught himself against the dashboard with the bucking force of the big truck, and Richie laughed. 

"Her name is Dolly," he mentioned, patting the steering wheel affectionately. "Because of her massive headlights."  
  
So much for keeping his comments to himself: "If I die on my first fucking date," Eddie warned, searching for a handhold above his head, to no avail, "on impact when you crash, or of tetanus or whatever other bacteria is hiding in this tin can, or both, I'm gonna haunt your ass 'til the day you die."

“Sounds hot,” Richie murmured. And they were off.

If he didn't die, Eddie thought, he was probably going to get a concussion, launched to one side or another every time Richie took a turn. It was an effort not to cover his head with his hands, but Eddie managed, simply because his white-knuckled fingers gripped into the armrests instead. Next time, he vowed, he was driving.

Richie-surprises were such a toss up, so Eddie could only hope that Richie was keen enough on keeping him as a friend-and-sorta-more for the rest of the summer, that he'd had the foreknowledge to make sure this was something high strung Eddie Kaspbrak would slap his seal of approval on. Other than that, he was in the dark. Between curiosity about their destination, and fear for his own life, his attention was all but gobbled up.

That’s when he saw the big red and white logo outside his window as they came upon a red building, plastered with wannabe Pippi Longstocking's cheerful face. Eddie stared back at her, mouth half-open.

“Wendy’s, huh.”

"Only the best for my Eddie. Get whatever you want, I'm buying. No holds barred." Beaming excitedly as he cranked down the window, Richie shoved his glasses up his nose with his middle finger before turning toward the menu.

An hour ago, Eddie had been fretting over polos versus button downs, jeans versus khakis, even considered, for a split second, a tie hanging in his closet. And now they were at Wendy's! It was all so tragically appropriate and even a little horribly perfect that Eddie had to slump back in his seat, tip his head back, and wonder if the overwhelming sensation in his chest meant he was having a heart attack.   
  
"Get me a cheeseburger and a frosty," he said simply, wondering if dating Richie made him a masochist. "I don't want to talk to the people."   
  
"You got it, babe," Richie cooed, honking his horn into the microphone when his initial  _ Hello? _ garnered no response. Finally, the tinny (impatient) voice answered him, and he rattled off their order before pulling forward. "Man, what's it take to get some good service around here?" 

The window slapped open and Richie passed his crumpled bills over with a toothy smile - earning a dull glare from someone who had lost the light in their eyes already. As if Eddie could possibly go unnoticed, he hunkered down in his seat, and decided to stare out his window for the remainder of the transaction.

The drink carrier for their three cups perched delicately between Richie’s hips and Eddie's on the bench seat. Richie dropped their bag of hot food into Eddie's lap and they were off again, speeding out of the parking lot and into the mild traffic that built up around the new stop light.

Between spreading his legs to accommodate a greasy bag of fast food that he didn't want to touch his khakis and trying to find the best position in the passenger's seat to avoid death when this trip inevitably went awry, Eddie had his work cut out for him. He might have been hungry enough to dip into the bag or at least his Frosty, but car rides and full stomachs never sat well with him, even when the driving was  _ good _ . He wasn't religious, but he said a little prayer hoping he would get to enjoy the rest of this outing. If he wasn’t going to die then by god he was gonna enjoy it.   
  
A woodsy detour out of town almost managed to upset his stomach without anything even in it, veering down a dirt path between the trees, jostling everything in the truck from the container of fries to Eddie’s teeth. He could not have been more relieved when they finally stopped, permanently (or what he hoped was permanent). He didn't care about offending Richie then, when he muttered  _ oh Lord _ and dropped his previously tense body against the seat to recover.

"Someday, they'll call this place Make-Out Point, or Kissing Creek," Richie declared confidently, unoffended after all. Eddie couldn’t even see a creek, but he supposed the cliff edge beyond the trees counted as a point.   
  
"Can it just be Eat My Fries Creek for a couple minutes?" Eddie asked, already with his hand in the stained paper bag. He was glad his picky habits didn't extend as far as most foods, otherwise he was pretty sure he just wouldn't be eating anything ever.   


"Well, it's not a very _ clever  _ title," Richie murmured, smiling again as he pressed down the parking brake, drawing one knee up to rest against the backrest while he reached for his own food. Eddie didn't hesitate to roll his eyes, and shoved two fries in his mouth anyway, claiming one of the cartons as his own. Parked, with no conceivable way of having his body thrown out the windshield, he unbuckled his seatbelt, and settled his food around him for easy access, his chocolate Frosty balanced on one knee.

It only took a minute or so to get them all set up and laid out, burgers resting on flattened wrappers. Richie dumped his fries into the bag, because he always liked the crunchiest ones first, and sucked on his coke before reaching for the radio.    


" _ \-- y homeboys tried to warn me - but with that butt you got makes _ -" 

"Me so horny," the trashmouth chirped in a high-pitched voice, bobbing his head and widening his eyes at Eddie. He managed a poker face for a couple seconds, his mouth poised over his burger clutched in both hands. But breaking was inevitable, and Eddie snorted, ducking his head into his collarbone. 

This was it. This is what he'd considered a necktie over.   


One resounding notion was that despite all Eddie's anticipation, this didn't feel like a date with Richie. Or, not how he thought it would feel, anyway. Maybe movies had warped his perception. Or better yet, they clicked so well that every interaction came easy. That was a nice thought, Eddie decided - as long as Richie wasn’t chanting Sir Mix-a-Lot.

Between the usual banter that ensued whether other losers were around or not, and eating, complete with Frosty-dipping for his fries, Eddie was pretty happy. Maybe he'd just been tipsy enough the other night, after graduation, to get so caught up in himself and fancy that the world was ending, but it really wasn't. And if anyone ever asked if he took Richie's face in his hands and swore to him that he  _ wasn't  _ garbage, he would deny deny deny. Then, get in a swift kick to the shins.   
  
When he was done eating, he was a little shivery from the Frosty, and his face burned where he scrubbed it with a rough brown napkin. Richie tossed the trash into the void that was the back of the truck, and Eddie tried not to think about what horrors lay there, if that’s what counted as waste disposal. His friend's restless energy was palpable, especially when Richie pinned him with big brown eyes.

"You wanna make out til the movie starts?" he asked, shifting forward again and setting his hand on the bench between them for balance as he loomed closer - brows wriggling while his teeth clamped down over his bottom lip.   
  
Sometimes, before, when he was caught off guard, Eddie's gay little crush on Richie had him staring stupidly, before he collected his wits and told himself he was dumb, but also better than that. But now the dam was broken, and Eddie couldn’t help staring longer than before, trying not to fixate on Richie's lips.   
  
"Wait, what movie?" he asked, whisper soft, when he realized he had in fact, been asked a question. It didn't matter really, though. He was perfectly pleased to make out with Richie without an apparent time limit.   


" _ A League of Their Own _ ," Richie answered simply, pointing out the corner of the windshield. Following the line of Richie's finger led Eddie's sights to the drive in screen a little ways across town. Not exactly what he expected, at all, his brow scrunching up. Maybe even annoyed that he had completely failed to notice. It wasn't exactly perfect, but who could blame a penniless teenager? Their angle made it look more like a rhombus than a rectangle, but in the dark (assuming the moon wasn't too bright) it could be fairly easy to see.

"I know that hot chicks in short skirts and sports movies aren't exactly you're thing but the other screen is blocked by a bunch of dumb maple trees. I’m planning a syrup boycott. And anyway Tom Hanks has a tight ass, right? He's gotta, it's baseball."

"I can at least appreciate their...form? Stance? Sportsmanship?" Fuck, Eddie didn't know anything about baseball, besides the house rules they made up when they played in the street as kids. He didn't know anything about girls either, but hey, maybe he'd learn something about both.   


But also, maybe he wouldn't even need to pay attention that much, Eddie thought hopefully. As if they were on the same wavelength, Richie leaned close enough to press his lips against the joint of Eddie’s jaw, where a cluster of nerves set his skin to tingling. It didn't help that he was still a little cold from his Frosty, and he squirreled away at the added stimulus.  
  
Only to squirrel right on back, because he wasn't gonna let Wendy's wuss him out of a good kiss. Eddie went for Richie's lips, if he was just gonna end up staring at them so much, and tucked his hands against the sharp slope of his jaw, like the other night. He liked the way it fit. And that way, he could keep Richie in check, not that there was much he left to check, aligned at the elbows as lips slotted a little hastily. Richie smiled against his mouth, only to let it fade so that he could press more solidly.

Face-clutching was a little hard when the angle of their bodies went sorta vertical, folded across Richie’s body when he leaned back, and Eddie's hands smoothed down Richie's chest instead, settling for a grip on his shirt. Every time the console tapped against his knee he was tempted to kick it, not that it would help, but Richie was too distracting, and fuck, the more distractions the better. Kissing him, zero hesitation, sliding their lips together and laving into his fast-food mouth maybe even too eagerly, all that fluff about three months and the end of August flitted right out of his mind.   
  
Some noise, whatever it was, jumped out of Eddie the moment he felt a hand on his butt, jumping as it squeezed. Warmth flooded his cheeks, and thank god Richie was too close to see very much because he did not need that little bit of info to lord over his head.   
  
At the sound of a commercial break on the radio, they separated briefly. Eddie took the opportunity to collect his breath and calm down, even though he'd be all fucked up again in just a minute. Richie played with the knobs on the radio, trying to find the drive-in station. "It'll be weird without sound, I can't read lips," he explained - only to crowd in and plant his mouth on Eddie’s throat a moment later, teeth and lips against pulse beside his Adam's apple. Eddie sighed so hard it fluffed Richie's hair.   
  
"Richie..." Eddie didn't know what to do with himself under these conditions, both his mouth and hands seeming utterly useless, but maybe he could take a page out of Richie's book. There was a lot to get in the way, but he managed to lift one leg between Richie's boney knees, and prod up between his thighs a little insistently - maybe even a little vindictively. That was for getting him all hot and bothered against his mom’s car the other night.

Richie hummed a groan, and Eddie felt the corners of his mouth spread, enough to ache a little and have his teeth peeking out between his lips. He felt like he'd discovered a panic button, except it wasn't really for panic, and it wasn't that special either because they were both teenage boys - adults if you were going to pull his leg about it - and he knew a thing or two about anatomy. Maybe it was just that, over however many years they had all been friends, he had never even thought to garner such a reaction from Richie.   
  
"Fuck, Eds," Richie bit out, not quite nipping sensitive skin as he dragged his tongue over the stark tendon on Eddie’s neck. A moment later, he lifted away, bespectacled face just barely visible at such a close angle. His glasses were skewed, lips rubbed redder than usual and parted - not that he could ever close his mouth and breathe through his nose like a normal person when he wasn't trapped underneath Eddie with a knee shoved between his jean-clad legs. 

In the slight dark that extended beneath the open view of the windows, Eddie found himself staring, just for a while. And fuck who wouldn't? Even if he wasn't freaking out just a little bit (because he was tangled up with Richie after lord knows how many years pining away), without context, he was still a contact-starved gay kid who happened to have his heart set on one of the cutest guys in town. Granted, Eddie was biased.   
  
Sliding his hands (plural) down around the curve of Eddie's ass again, the shameless trashmouth got a good enough grip to drag him closer, higher, all but grinding himself down onto Eddie's thigh as his own leg bent up just enough to offer the same sort of friction. Eddie fumbled against Richie's chest, moving his hands around to the window when there wasn't enough distance to support them all folded up on Richie's collarbone, grunting and swearing all the while. All this abrupt contact got him way too worked up.  
  
It was a wonder they didn't set off some alarm or another, or that they could both almost fit in the driver's seat. But as long as it was working it wasn't something he had to worry about. Eddie's breath was coming out long and heavy, and he was trying very hard to keep any unnecessary noise in his mouth. He decided that it was dark enough that Richie didn't need to see anyway, and he bent low enough to have their lips almost touching again, bringing his hands back to push up the arms of Richie's glasses so they sat nestled in his hair instead of on his face. Then, Eddie swooped over his mouth without having to worry about the plastic frames digging into his skin when he got too close.   


A noisy breath trembled out of Eddie and into Richie's mouth at the next grind of friction, interrupting every thought pattern in his head. Though, already kissing, there probably wasn't a lot going on as far as neurological activity went. Richie groaned, hands tugging at the loose blouse of Eddie’s shirt, restrained by his leather belt. For a couple of seconds Eddie was content to let him fucking try, while he sucked Richie’s bottom lip between his teeth. How hard was it to pull a shirt out of a pair of pants? 

But then, a couple of things dawned on Eddie like a little bell going off in his head, though, and he remembered why everyone considered him the party pooper (when Stan wasn't available).   
  
"M'not-" Besides the occasional expletive, or name, or both, talking against someone's mouth was hard, especially Richie's, with his dumb lips that Eddie apparently couldn't go five minutes without thinking about. He sighed, and pushed himself away, sitting as best he was able, while still straddling Richie. He had one hand planted on that skinny chest for balance, and carefully avoiding letting the tent in his pants come into his own line of vision.    
  
"I'm not gonna fuck in the truck, Richie."   


"You're sure fucking my mouth pretty hard with that sweet little tongue of yours," Richie accused wryly, a smug grin pinching his cheeks, squinting in the wake of the theft of his glasses. Eddie glared, but he probably couldn’t be seen very well.

"It's warm enough to fuck in the grass," the trashmouth added, his hands sliding down over Eddie's ass again, only to roll forward over the curve of his bent up thighs. "Or we could just keep our clothes on. Can't fuck with all your clothes on, right?" 

As much of an accident-waiting-to-happen as the truck was, Eddie had a too much of a sense for self-preservation to even  _ try  _ getting down and dirty with Richie outside. They had their hiding places, but everything existed on a scale. The muddy ground in the woods was so low on that scale, it might as well have been a circle of hell.

Maybe, later on down the road, if he hoped and prayed a little more, Eddie could count on his mom's hearing being bad, at home. But even that was a stretch.   
  
"Well I'm not the one trying to pull my shirt over my head," Eddie said - the stretched tuck of his polo shirt evidence enough. 

"Head? Pft, I can't even get it out of your underwear.”  
  
"I don’t tuck my shirt into my underwear!" Not for the last couple years, anyway. Before Richie's hands could get too antsy, Eddie grabbed them, turning them over on his thighs to thread their fingers together. "Fuck, the movie hasn’t even started yet. Look what you did."

"I can’t, I'm blind!" Richie complained, wriggling his fingers as he lifted Eddie's hands, pawing haphazardly at shoulders and chest and stomach. Suddenly, he slowed dramatically, lips rounding on a whispered syllable as he felt the outline of a fleshy shaft - Eddie’s shaft, specifically, wedged up against the seam of his khakis. Eddie fought a gasp, that still managed to escape in a whisper.   
  
"Aw, Eds. You flatterer," the trashmouth whispered, sounding breathless. Then, in his best Urkel: "Did I do that?"   
  
"Literally, shut up," Eddie chided, refusing to give Richie the satisfaction of confirmation. Still, he couldn’t exactly lie. The proof was in his pants   
  
Wasn't above refuting his own resolutions though, apparently, as Eddie glanced down his nose at Richie's shadowed, grinning face, and not the tangle of their hands. As long as Richie was gonna leave them there, he might as well make use. Chewing his bottom lip, Eddie rolled up into the cup of fingers made by his and Richie's hands, relishing the sweet slide of friction created with just skin, cotton, and a zipper.   
  
Richie's whole body swelled with a gasped breath. The shift pressed Eddie's leg against him again, nudging his own jean-trapped boner into the forward facing and upright position. Richie pressed the heel of his hand down, fingers curling into the annoyingly tight fabric encasing Eddie’s raging boner, and it was just tantalizing enough not to be infuriating. Shit, if he creamed his fucking khakis then he'd have to remember to do his own laundry next time.   
  
"Gettin’ antsy, Spaghettios?" Richie teased softly, even with his voice tight. Whenever he opened his mouth, it was just a little bit sobering.

"Look, Richie," Eddie huffed, tipping his head toward the ceiling for a moment. It was hard to draw a linear thought, with all his focus vying for the hot, aching apex between his legs. "Someday, we're gonna fuck. Like, really fuck, in a bed and shit, none of this tetanus-mobile crap. But when we do, I don't want to hear anything about spaghetti, got it?"   


“I love it when you talk dirty, Eds.”

The stop and go of this culmination, though irritating to some degree, was oddly appropriate, considering who Eddie was dealing with. Who they were, what kind of shit they got up to. If he had imagined things like this happening any other way (and damn, he definitely had), it seemed completely impossible compared to now.   
  
Richie's hands were still huddled into his crotch, but Eddie's had taken a backseat. His knuckles were starting to hurt a little, he'd been doing a lot of gripping and fisting against rough surfaces. Eddie was way more satisfied than he should have been to let Richie take the lead, on anything, really. Not that at this point - with his boner flush so hard against his pants he could feel the weave of the fabric - there was much lead to take.

"Whadaya wanna hear?" Richie went on, voice an almost taunting purr while he continued to mill against Eddie’s throbbing dick. His pitch rose a bit, words going breathy while he freed his fingers enough to cup under the stretch of fabric instead, palming him again, with enough desperation to make Eddie’s blood sing. "Take me, Eddie. Pretty please with cherries and cream? I want you, I need you, oh baby oh baby." 

"Richie-!" 

In retrospect, Eddie would blame inexperience. Inexperience, and stimulus happening all around him. But right now all Eddie could blame was himself, for being a dumbass who couldn't pace himself, when he came hard and hot against the seam of his pants. No build-up, no peak, just his own horny shame.   
  
"Shit, shit!" He could still to swear up a storm, though, despite his body trying to topple over of Richie to die. Somehow, Eddie held himself up, arms trembling. Fuck, he'd been half-kidding when he thought about creaming his pants!   


Richie, on the other hand, was loving all this. "So fuckin hot, Eds," he murmured, upright enough to tip his chin and nip at Eddie’s pinched lips, arms going around his shaking rib cage to drag Eddie against him. He barely mustered a withering glare in return.   


So much for pacing out the summer. Eddie breathed through his nose so hard it made his nostrils sting. His self-made shame chipped away just a little under the eager pull of Richie's hands and lips, but he could barely reciprocate, his limbs operating like they were encased in concrete. But as the haze wore off, Eddie came back to himself. Heady enough for just a moment to shove his tongue in Richie's mouth and crawl his hands up his shirt - but then he moved his legs, and felt the slimy wet slide on his limp dick.   
  
"Get off me." Even though  _ he _ was the one on Richie. Eddie dislodged himself, and fell back over onto his side of the car, though Richie's long legs invaded that space too. At that point, the screen was lit up at the drive-in, and he fumbled over his head for a light to survey the damage.   


"Oh, shit, it started," Richie mentioned, reaching for the dial to turn up the crackling dialogue. He wasn’t that interested in the movie, though, turning his head to grin lecherously.

"The cost of keeping our clothes on," he chortled out, pressing the back of his hand against his open mouth as he dropped back against the seat. 

"Richie I swear to god!" Eddie didn't finish that statement, didn't even know how to. But Richie was laughing his ass off and Eddie looked like he'd wet himself and Geena Davis's voice in the background just wasn't helping.   
  
He finally found the button and clicked it on, yellow light pouring into the front seats. It was just enough to get a look at himself, craning into the middle of the bench to see in the rearview mirror. They had probably been there for what, ten minutes? Apparently Eddie had zero self control. Richie did too, but they already knew that.   
  
Eddie swiveled his head back and forth to see how much he'd have to fix his hair. Right then, with his head tossed to the side, he caught the trail of purple blotches all down the side of his throat, collected against his Adams Apple and under his jaw. His own open-mouthed horror stared back at him in the dirty mirror.   
  
"What's this!" Eddie turned to Richie and pointed, head tilted dramatically just so he could see the damage he'd done. 

"A damn good start," Richie pronounced confidently, head nodding his assurance. He had the gall to roll down his window in the meanwhile.

"They’re hickeys, Richie! I can't fix this with a comb! If I go home like this my mother is going to have a stroke, kick my ass, and then have another stroke!"

"Dude, relaaax, I've probably got some cover up in here," Richie offered, reaching across to pull open the glove compartment. "But you look better like that."    
  
Moving over for Richie's long arms, Eddie gave up trying to make the hickeys go away, just by pulling and prodding his skin in the mirror. All he could do was sit back, and wait for the magic cure. 

He didn't expect Richie to whip out a tube of makeup, looking like a stubby capped pen.

"That sorta matches," Richie murmured, holding it close enough to Eddie’s cheek to poke him with it. "That's what you get for keeping your shirt on, you know. How am I s'pose to get my mouth on anything less visible?"   
  
"Hey." Eddie grabbed Richie's hand, fingers curled around his closed fist, and he pulled the fat stick out with his other hand. "Fuck, I don't know how to use this. This is girl stuff." Nevertheless, he relinquished his grip to uncap the thing, met with a pale crayon looking thing the color of flesh. Well,  _ someone's  _ flesh. Not his.   
  
But it was all he had, and coming back with a scarf after leaving without one was just plain stupid. Eddie frowned as he turned back to the mirror, gingerly dragging the oily crayon stick over the offended area. It looked like carnival-grade face paint.   
  
"This is just making it worse!"   
  
Without a word - or much in the way of warning, let alone explanation - Richie took Eddie's chin and cheek in hand, stilling him with a press of his thumb and fingers that managed to pucker his lips. Eddie hardly expected him to take the damn thing out of his hand and set to task himself.    
  
"You must  _ blend _ ," Richie said, sounding like he had heard it from Beverly, or maybe the television. His fingertips rubbed over the areas he covered with the makeup. "Come on, Eddie, deep breaths. Your brain needs oxygen after an orgasm, everyone knows that.”

With the bright light overhead, and a little stick prodding his skin, this felt like on of Eddie’s many doctor's appointments. His own miserable expression could not have been more different from all Richie's smiles and crinkling eyes behind his replaced glasses, looming close to get his work done. 

That was when Eddie noticed just how much damage he had managed to cause too. The red in Richie's lips, more vibrant than usual, extended into the skin around his mouth, and splotchy pink covered his already pale cheeks. Eddie could count his freckles from here. No fucking hickeys, though.   
  
"Wait ‘til I tell everyone," he said, his voice a lot quieter than it had been since debauching himself, "that Richie Tozier's got makeup in his truck."

"Ya gonna tell'em what I used it for?" the trashmouth asked, remorseless. "Wait ‘til I tell everyone that  _ Eddie Kaspbrak creamed his pants  _ in my truck!”   
  
Eddie could not roll his eyes hard enough, try as he might. Just because he remembered how gross his crotch felt (and not at all because Richie brought it all back into the forefront of his mind), he squeezed his knees together, as if that might help. Now, he was a little surprised he'd managed to get through the entire ordeal without wheezing himself to death.    
  
Richie sure did take his good old time (probably on purpose), but when he decided he was finished, relinquishing applicator and fingers, Eddie was rewarded with a soft kiss he hadn't expected. 

"How's that look?" Richie asked, releasing Eddie's face finally to turn the rear view more toward him. Judging by the reflection, the color in his cheeks still hadn't quite dissipated, and probably wouldn't for another couple minutes. But Eddie could barely see the purple on his throat, now dulled by the  _ blended _ cover up. If he could keep the evening conversation with Sonia short, he would probably be in the clear.

"Good," Eddie admitted, righting himself, head bent to look at Richie. "Thanks. But it's not gonna go away overnight. Do you mind if I-" Almost bashfully, as if he was asking for a completely nonobjective reason, he pointed at the applicator. "Borrow it?"

"Ya gonna put it back on the stick when you're done wearing it, Eds?" Richie asked, a little incredulous in tone. Eddie countered with the most deadpan expression he could muster, but it was admittedly tired, given the circumstances.   
  
"You can  _ use _ it," Richie acquiesced finally, holding the little tube out for Eddie to take - only to whip it out of reach at the last moment, his eyes narrowing, lips pinching in thought. "But what'll you give me for it?"

"Wha- I gave you bragging rights!" Eddie cried, throwing his hands up in frustration. "You're gonna go tell every last one of our friends that you got me to cum in my pants, and you're gonna tell them I let you give me all these hickeys too. I'm also giving you a free pass from getting your ass kicked! You should really be giving me the makeup and a couple of dollars, if you really want to make it even."   
  
"Bragging rights are earned, Eddie, darling, light of my life. They were mine as soon as you gasped my name during your climax." Brows lifting then, Richie bit the tip of his own tongue, grinning much more vertically than horizontally - exposing the beaver teeth in all their crest toothpaste glory - before he laughed and slumped forward, the makeup stick rolling between his fingers like a coin. The aggravated noise Eddie made in the back of his throat wasn't quite a growl, but guttural nonetheless. He'd probably made it before when  _ shut up _ wouldn't work and  _ beep beep _ was just too much, and would make it a thousand times again when it was appropriate.   
  
"I want one," Richie decided finally, gesturing vaguely toward himself with the bend of his supporting elbow.

"Want what? A hickey?" Eddie demanded, even though it couldn't have possibly been anything else. "You're lucky I don't give you a black eye!" He crossed his arms and huffed, as if kissing Richie was any harder than it had been five minutes ago. Hell, he still needed to find napkins to wipe out the inside of his pants, and maybe a jacket to tie around his waist.

And if he wanted to survive his mother, and enjoy the rest of the summer, he would really need that cover up stick too.   
  
"Fine! C'mere!" Reaching for Richie's collar, his preferred perch apparently, Eddie yanked the asshole toward him, crushing their lips together so hard it hurt his teeth. Mouth wasn’t the way to go, he knew that, but he didn't know where else he was supposed to start and let it come naturally.   


That sense of self-preservation came back just long enough for Eddie to switch off the light, and then it was so dark that they just barely got some illumination from the slanted screen across the way. Luckily he didn't need to see what he was doing, just feel, a little more pleased with the slide of their mouths than he should have been, after Richie fucked him over so bad.   
  
"S'at all ya got?" Richie asked, words smothered, his teeth parting to let their tongues lave together. Eddie wasn't here to kiss (not in this exact moment, anyway), he was here to get what he wanted, and that meant jumping through Trashmouth's ridiculous hoops. The mumbled question only served to infuriate him more, and he retaliated by biting down on Richie's lip the second it was close enough.   
  
The easiest spot was the neck, same as his own - but in this regard, almost too easy. Richie didn't deserve easy. Eddie unlatched one hand from the shirt he'd been abusing all night, and found Richie's with it,  lifting their joined fingers up toward his face. He retreated, and took a deep breath before pressing Richie's lean hand to his face for a much softer kiss. It wasn't really necessary, but he wasn't going to think about why - just pulled down Richie's sleeve enough to get his mouth on his arm.   
  
Either this asshole was too shocked or too complacent to stop the damage from being done, because Eddie was able to suck a nice dark mark into the firm part of Richie's skin, tossing the stupid hand back when he was done. "There's your hickey! Try bragging about that one without getting laughed out of the room."   


Contrary to what Eddie expected, Richie lifted his wrist to his face, touching the mark with wide, blinking eyes - almost soft, without a single fuss. The sight made Eddie feel a little softer too, coming down from his anger high (that was just some kind of misplaced excitement, really). He kept forgetting that they really liked each other, and that this was all happening 'cause of that. It was weird to think about.   


"You cheapskate," Richie accused dryly, throwing the make up tube across the inches-wide gap made by Eddie sitting back. "Clean yourself up, we're missing the whole movie!"   
  
There was the fuss.    
  
"Oh yeah, I’ll just suck the jizz out of my pants, that will work." All Eddie could do was pray it would be dry, or dry _ er _ , by the time he got home. And grab the stack of unused napkins to fix up the mess inside. This was his life now, apparently, in this moment. Unbuckling his belt and undoing his fly to scrub up as much as he could from inside of his underpants. It could have been worse.

"You could suck jizz out of my pants," Richie teased, dodging a wad of sullied napkins a second later. 

Eddie calmed down just in time for Tom Hanks to stop pissing, Richie’s arms around him, this time relaxed back against the same door he had been pinned to not so long ago. It took three warnings for him to stop messing with Eddie’s hair, and a fist to the shoulder after that.


	3. Chapter 3

The Fourth of July felt like a red flag fluttering from the corner of a hurdle that was coming too fast, with the added stress of knowing Richie couldn't slow down (for the hurdle, since speed was needed to leap, and for the summer, because time was an uncontrollable entity that had become his enemy and didn't even have the courtesy to be something he could smack across the face with a baseball bat). Hours of not being able to do more than brush against Eddie without garnering a nervous glance around or a protective closing of the circle as their friends half-consciously shielded them from judgmental eyes concluded with the last of the parade floats, and an empty whiskey bottle wrapped in brown paper making them all a little giggly as they piled into a couple of vehicles and booked it for the farm on the edge of town.   
  
Mike lived far away from the public park where fireworks were usually set off under the watchful eye of the Derry Fire Department, to leave a solid five second delay between exploding flashes of light and the bang that was sure to follow. He also had unbridled access to the roof of the slaughter house, which - despite the unusual odors - was a pretty chill place to converge with their picnic blankets and party poppers and left over slushies.   
  
"Move your ass," Richie groaned dramatically, paused behind Bev's Daisy Duked butt while whoever had gone first seemed to hesitate stepping into the open air. There wasn't a handrail, but that was no excuse to have everyone bumping into each other like sentient dominoes.

"So, like, you kill animals here?" Eddie asked Mike behind him, sounding apprehensive.   
  
"Well, yeah," Mike replied. "But not on the roof. I promise the smell isn't bad from up there either."

Sure enough, no smell, but a row of nest-discouraging spikes stood where a railing might be nice. The shallow angle of the roof wasn't too hard to navigate, most of the tiles flat and even. When the wind took his blanket backwards, Richie growl-shouted into the soft flannel before Ben rescued him from the assault.   
  
Painfully mindful of the threat of potential disaster that yanking Eddie off his feet posed, Richie did it anyway - once his own seat was comfortably secured - and buried his face into the startled nerd's chest, curling Eddie into the hammock of his arms and crossed legs.   
  
"Have a nice trip?" Richie mumbled, voice quiet despite the utter lack of concern about being overheard.   
  
"Nice heart attack, more like it," Eddie griped, punching Richie in the arm. The half-hidden amusement of the other losers was not lost on them, and hadn't been since that first night in Bill's backyard. It was almost endearing in a way, and Richie had no problem as long as Eddie decided to settle against him. Maintaining hands off protocol in public was  _ so  _ exhausting.

"We're not gonna die up here, are we?" Eddie called over to Mike, to which he received a shaken head as answer.

"Don't worry Eds, those safety spikes will impale us instead of letting us fall to our immediate and almost painless deaths. We're safe here," Richie announced, squeezing a little tighter, since his bundle of boyfriend needed a more secure position. Having Eddie leaned back against his chest and their hands clutched together was even better than having him bowled into his lap, though it did involve sorta crushing his balls every time the shorter brunet adjusted.    
  
"Who was supposed to bring the hookers?" Richie demanded, just as the first distant explosion hit the sky.   


“I can fill in, in a pinch,” Beverly answered, good-natured and wry. A chorus of chuckles pattered out.

“Looks like you got yours Richie, where’s ours?” Stan asked, deadpan.

“Bite me,” Eddie sneered.

With those good Derry firemen pacing themselves, no doubt to keep the fireworks cost down, there was enough time for the rolling pops and bangs to reach them before the next flash, brightening the horizon in shades of green and red and white. Only the smatterings of streaky blue made it a properly patriotic affair.   
  
Suddenly, Eddie's hand drew Richie’s attention immediately, the silhouette of long fingers coming into view a moment before he felt them against his cheek. Richie tipped his chin down almost reflexively - as curious as anything. That curiosity was cured the moment Eddie's mouth found his, and the taller brunet hummed happily.   
  
"Honey, in front of the kids?" he asked quietly (between resounding booms, just to be heard), not waiting for an answer before he slid their lips together again, his arms tightening in an attempt to draw Eddie higher, closer. It was almost disgusting how cliche it all was. Kissing in front of fireworks. What was next, a sunset in Paris?

Probably not, considering it was already four days into their second to last month.

***

Another couple nights went by before Richie’s next chance to woo Eddie Kaspbrak. With the finicky dork insisting on driving this time, it didn’t leave much opportunity for forest frottage. Sonia ran a tight ship - or, car, in this case.

These long, sunny summer days made standing alone outside his house at six o’clock seem just a little bit too suspicious, and Richie tried to convince himself that he wasn't hiding under a tree when Eddie finally drove into view, coming to a full stop and parking like a good boy who remembered everything the Maine Driver’s Handbook.

"Hey! Oh, wait, I'm supposed to be a lecherous creep." Eddie cleared his throat and did his best impression of Richie doing his best impression of a douchebag, one eye squinched up in a wink. "Hey, you, sweet thing, you look like you could use a…good time."

"Shit, do I have time to change my panties?" Richie asked, pausing to slow clap at the magnificent performance, before pulling the door open and dropping inside. A hello kiss preceded his tug on Eddie's collar, looking for a peak at the most recent cluster of hickeys - now intelligently placed within hiding reach of most shirts. "Am I dressed okay? I brushed my teeth but wasn't sure about the assless chaps."   


"You're fine," Eddie said, almost too sincere. Richie had been aiming for a quip. Maybe it just wasn’t that funny. Ah well, next time.

Eddie obeyed the speed limit, trying his best to make an example of himself. Rather than get offended, Richie smiled, pleased just to be sitting next to his brand spanking new boyfriend, where he could hold a prolonged gaze without running the risk of crashing. 

It took them all of five minutes to reach their destination - which turned out to be Eddie’s very own house, of all places.

The high strung hypochondriac took his good old time, waiting until the key was out of the ignition to explain: "My mom's out of town, at her great aunt's or something, broke her hip I guess. I was trying not to eavesdrop on the phone." He tossed his hands in the air, and they landed back in his lap. "You don't know the hoops I had to jump through to get her not to leave me with someone, like fuck, I'm literally an adult now. I know this is probably super lame, it was just an idea. We could just go to the movies or something. But I gotta tell you, I'm kinda tired of Wendy's."   
  
The first sentence alone was enough to have a slow creeping grin spread across Richie's cheeks, his teeth parting along the way until his mouth gaped, jaw all the way open by the time Eddie finished. By the fifth sentence, a whole host of possibilities - which quickly became a bucket list - had flipped and fluttered through his thoughts, pulse hammering all the while with the new surge of excitement and probably adrenaline. It wasn’t lame, it was a motherfucking dream come true.  
  
"Finally! A chance to find your mom's underwear drawer!" Richie exclaimed, throwing himself out of the car as soon as the door swung open, launching himself across the lawn towards the porch.   
  
Only to find out that Eddie had been smart (paranoid) enough to lock it before coming to pick him up. Devastated, Richie flung himself against it, slowly sliding down as he crumpled to the ground in defeat.   


"Stop it, you weirdo! My mom's probably gonna grill everyone within a five mile radius if there was any funny business at the house." Eddie kicked and pulled and prodded until Richie was back on his feet, and turned to unlock the door, paving the way into a paradise free of its cruel overseer, the likes of which Richie intended to take full advantage of.

"You know where everything is," Eddie mentioned, dropping his keys in a bowl by the front door. "Do you want something to eat?"

"Absolutely," Richie agreed immediately, his voice managing to cooperate long enough to do a velvety deep thing while he smirked seductively, only to sober a moment later. "Oh you mean from the kitchen?" he asked then, plowing ahead with a surreptitious glance at the empty recliner in front of the dark TV.   
  
"So when does the S-word embargo end?" he asked, opening cabinets at random as he made his way around the kitchen, touching things simply because he had been told not to in the last ten years. "’Cause I'm feeling some good ol' Italian but I'll never forgive myself if I cock block myself before we get started."

"Well if you're going to be like that..." Eddie moved on to the pantry, and began to rifle around the copious reserves. Of course the Kaspbrak residence would be stocked for the apocalypse, with a pantry bigger than Richie’s truck bed, full to bursting with boxes and cans and back up condiment bottles.   


A moment later, Eddie dropped two boxes of pasta the counter. "Your choices are rotini or ziti. I don’t really cook so I can't promise it will turn out like Olive Garden." Energetic as ever, Eddie swung around and moved to pilfer the fridge. With his boyfriend jumping right to the task of cooking, Richie decided that he would never ever admit it had been a joke.

Feeling a bit like a conquering invader, he reached for a pot and searched the drawers for a wooden spoon. After so many years of occasionally having to protect his mom from her own assault on the kitchen, Richie had picked up a few things, and knew enough to manage macaroni.   
  
"Got any meat?" Richie asked, turning to pinch Eddie's ass while he bent face first into the refrigerator. He  _ almost  _ had it in him to feel bad when the shortie knocked his head against the shelf.

"Not for you!” Eddie retorted, whipping in close enough to Richie's face that he had to lean back to accommodate, only to slide away with a jar of tomato sauce before a kiss could be stolen. Closing the refrigerator in the wake of such feisty motivation, the taller brunet watched Eddie go through the motions of filling the pot with water and noodles, before setting it on a burner. So mundane, and yet still so cute.

"This is the longest part," Eddie murmured, glancing at the flame that clicked to life beneath the placid water.   


"Well you know what they say about a watched pot," Richie said, settling against the counter to watch Eddie's concentration face. Arms uncrossing, he crowded forward as soon as his boyfriend turned away from his handiwork, deciding to take it as an invitation to distract.   
  
"Bet I could suck you off before it boils," Richie challenged quietly, trapping Eddie with his hips against the counter - since the stove was likely to garner a more wild resistance.

Eddie stared at him, brow cocked up - and damn, he almost seemed to consider it. “In the kitchen? Have you done that before?”

Richie opened his mouth around a long drawn out  _ uhhhm _ , searching the ceiling for an answer. As if he had to think about it. "Once or twice," he answered finally, taking the time to smooth his palms down Eddie's back and around his waist. "Plus, everyone tries to suck their own dick at least once, don't pretend. I've seen you twisted up in some pretty strained positions." Nodding resolutely, Richie grinned, swiping his tongue across his teeth.

“Oh yeah, because I’d totally do that while other people were watching,” Eddie snorted.

“Everyone likes a show, Eds.”

Eddie rolled his eyes, which usually meant Richie was being at least tolerable. Tolerable encompassed a lot of things - but, not really what Eddie said next.

"I have a better idea," he insisted. "You might wanna switch with me for this." Without warning (or maybe that had been the warning), he step-ball-changed away from the counter, and got Richie pressed against it with little effort.

"You never got off in the truck, right? I'll return the favor. It's only fair. But I'll have the decency to get your pants  _ off _ ." Eddie glanced up under his brow, descending to his knees. With all the sparky rage and obstinance the little brunet was capable of, safe to say, Richie was shocked.

"I got off six times this week thinking about you getting off in the truck, Eddie dear, you can just admit you wanna know what I taste like," he rattled before he could rethink it, and held his breath for a moment before it burst out of him again, shaking his whole form as his hands fell almost protectively over his zipper - really, was this how he was going to handle their first blow job adventure?   
  
"Not that I'm arguing," Richie added with a quick grin, brows flicking and face hotter than the stove.

"Keep an eye on the pot, Rich," Eddie mentioned, unfazed, ignoring all that distracting fluff more effectively than he ever had before. In the same breath, he took Richie's hands off his fly, intertwining their fingers, almost tenderly. Richie was not prepared for this range of arousal and affection.

"What's it gonna do, jump up and run?" he asked incredulously, head tipping toward the pot all the same, as if he needed to double check that it wouldn't. He squeezed Eddie’s hands before forcing himself still again, cursing internally for the sudden rush of restless energy.   


“You showered today, right?”

"Course I did, every dirty slut knows about the importance of hygiene and I got plenty of spank bank for vigorous scrubbing in all the important areas. Dad had to turn the water off just to get me out so really we should be grateful I was even on time." Talking was the only way to get the air out of his body without simply bursting open like a bag of microwave popcorn. Especially as Eddie pressed the bridge of his nose against Richie's fly, fanning his breath out. It was hot and damp against his dick (already half hard now), and Richie couldn’t believe how low the little neat freak had already stooped (literally - a couple feet off the ground!).

"You know what you're doing?" he asked, just a little too fast, just a little too curious. The downside of letting his mouth run was that Eddie paused just long enough for him to finish speaking, his own eyebrows furrowed in frustration. In his entire life, Richie could only count two or three times that he really needed to shut up. Whether he actually did or not, well, he couldn’t remember. Now, though, fuck, his  _ life  _ depended on it.

"More than  _ you _ do," Eddie said finally, casting a pointed look at Richie before returning to his task at hand. He got to work with the zipper, relinquishing both Richie’s hands to unfasten the button and then pull down the fly.

"With my own dick? I don't think so, Kaspbrak," the trashmouth countered, head shaking as he lifted it away for a moment, just to rescue himself from the sight of Eddie's hands on his crotch. So much for shutting up.    
  
Richie’s jeans fit him loosely enough that Eddie had no trouble pushing them down to his thighs, dragging against the counter he balanced against. Not everyone could rock a tight fit like Eddie. Namely, because not everyone had a tight ass like Eddie. Even Richie’s was severely lacking, but he had enough charm and wit to make up for it.   
  
"Did you soak your hands in ice water while I wasn't looking?" Richie asked then, not that Eddie’s perfect hands against his bare legs were even remotely cold. At this point he was just grasping for something, anything he could say to keep his soul in his body.

Instead of answering, Eddie glared at him. Richie pressed his lips, huffing a sigh, more to get his lungs under control than anything. Talk about wish fulfillment. And here he was, a startled deer in the headlights. 

Eddie slid one hand up Richie's hips, until his thumb hooked under the hem of his shirt and he could lift the fabric. When his navel was exposed, Eddie dipped forward to press his lips around it, swirling his tongue over goose-pebbled skin and easing Richie’s underpants off in the process. Reaching for his own shirt and lifting it out of the way enough to get a look at the puckered mouth rounded against his belly must have been instinctual, since it happened while Richie's brain was going through an emergency restart, complete with dial up noises and a busy signal.   
  
"How's that for a hickey?" Eddie murmured vindictively, after he'd sucked a dark enough spot into Richie's soft stomach, the same diameter as his rounded mouth. 

"You're certainly improving!" Richie finally managed to declare, fingers curled tightly into his shirt as his jeans slipped lower. "I'm so proud."   


As if Richie didn’t even exist then, just a pair of hips sporting a full-chub in the middle of the Kaspbrak kitchen, Eddie leaned forward again, eyes slipping shut, letting his lips bump against the tip of Richie's dick. Only his dumb mouth gasping open kept him from hissing in breath, and Richie focused on not biting his tongue as his teeth closed a moment later, biting back noises that were just as likely to make Eddie laugh - and therefore stop - than anything. His hands rose, fingers curling like claws against his own chest while he resisted the urge to grab at chestnut waves. What he would do with them, Richie didn't know.   


Eddie sank forward over the mushroom cap, taking his good old time making Richie squirm. Bent at this angle, at least he didn't have to hold his shirt out of the way to see, which might have been against his benefit, considering his legs started to tremble every time those pink lips moved in microscopic increments.   
  
"Oh shit that's hot," Richie whispered quickly, the air squeezing out of him enough that he huffed a laugh, his glasses sliding down his face.

There were, no doubt, a hundred million ways to accidentally make Eddie stop what he was doing, from affrontation to injury, and the only thing Richie could do to avoid every single one of them was absolutely nothing. No moving, no speaking, probably no choked off noises or even the most sincere of moans and gasps, since he had been making fake sex sounds long enough to cast himself in mockery with every decibel.   
  
All that conscious concern didn't stop him from catching sounds in his throat while the brunet at his feet trailed a line of spit up the sensitive side of his shaft, and then engulfed it in that tiny mouth of his. Well, not so tiny. Eddie could make a lot of noise and take a lot of air and also apparently half or more of Richie's whole dick on the first try.   
  
Whipping his head to the side, the trashmouth focused on the pot for a moment, as if making sure it wasn't boiling over would keep him from replacing Eddie on the first place pedestal for fastest climax. Every slide of Eddie's mouth over that central part of his already central nervous system was like it's own rapture, attempting over and over to yank him into the sky while Richie held himself to earth by strands of grass. Every threatening scrape of teeth and press of a hot tongue and brush against that textured roof between his molars. And from the looks of it, Eddie had figured out just how to make his eyes go all chocolate lava cake in his pretty face. Had he practiced?! On what, Richie could only wonder. Carrot, cucumber, eggplant...   
  
"Eds," he gasped out a few times - warning and plea and mantra - before Richie finally lifted his hands to feather his fingers through soft brown locks. It had always, always astounded him how Eddie's hair managed to be softer than it looked - which was really saying something. Grip and twist and pull impulses were resisted just long enough to set one steadying hand against the counter behind him, though Richie tried to keep it reigned in, far from interested in encouraging Eddie's wrath.   
  
But the sensation of soft hair tangled around his fingers, the increasing tension and release as Eddie bent forward and back, the slick slide of that hot, wet cavern-

The hiss of boiling water as it splattered out of the pot, across the stove, and Richie’s hand.   
  
"Ow! Ow ow ow!" Yanking away from the counter, Richie unbalanced himself, falling forward with nowhere to put his legs that would save him. Clutching Eddie's head against was almost reflex but had nothing to do with the moment his orgasm drove out of him like a rocket launch into Eddie’s throat.   


All Richie could do was separate his knees, bending both legs outward in an attempt not to grind the bony joints straight through Eddie's soft bits or rib cage and right into the floor. When he landed, there was a dichotomous cacophony of sensation from his pulsing climax wedged into that thought-crippling mouth to the jarring strike of his elbows and knees on the tile floor, with Eddie half straddled beneath him and already flailing.   


Practically smothered, Eddie kicked and punched until Richie rolled off, landing on his back, gasping in - well all sorts of ways. Agony, astonishment, terror. He stayed on the floor for as long as it took Eddie to scramble to his feet, and watched from his defeated position as the shorter brunet hocked and gagged into the sink.   
  
A hissed breath accompanied the realization that his hand was scalded, and Richie gripped his own wrist with the opposite hand, observing a red splatter of welts that weren't even likely to blister before he sat up, elbows resting on his bared knees still tangled in his own underwear.

Eddie spit again, this time after gurgling water, and finally turned, looking like he’d been force fed cough syrup. Maybe Richie was an asshole (actually, he was definitely an asshole), but the whole shiny red lips and angry eyes thing was kinda hot.

"Just once," Eddie bit out, voice hoarse, "I'd like for someone to climax without making a big fucking mess out of everything."   


"Sex is messy, Eds, that's why animals do it outside," Richie grumbled, pulling his underwear up enough to climb forward onto his feet. His hand hurt but not enough to be super delicate about it. Mostly he just wanted to keep his balance.   
  
Eddie's voice sounded just like his own had the last time someone got rude about pulling out, and Richie wasn't quite sure what to do with that guilt just yet, even as he approached the sink to check the shorter brunet for injury.   
  
"You okay?" he asked quietly, buttoning himself back together before finally reaching up to touch his fingertips against Eddie's chin. When the pot hissed and spit again, Richie slapped off the burner with a vengeance, scowling at the whole thing - mostly because it was utterly and entirely his fault.

Eddie looked like he might turn away for a second, but caught sight of something that kept his attention for just a little longer. "Your hand," he managed, grabbing Richie by the wrist, lifting to survey the damage.   
  
"You can't even watch a pot boil and sit still right," he muttered roughly, flicking the faucet back on for Richie to hold his hand under while he sought out the medical cabinet.

"I wasn't sitting!" Richie argued immediately, the first resistance to be offered amongst all the tugging (and pushing, and occasionally kicking) that went into being bossed around by Eddie. With his hand under the cold water and the home-taught nurse off to his magic cupboard, the brunet could only huff a sigh, slouching down with his ass bent out so that he could rest his elbow on the edge of the sink and hang his hand over the reach of his “wounded” arm.    
  
At least he could check the noodles, Richie figured, straightening to use his free hand to pluck up a curly wriggling bite. It was a little al dente but far from inedible and the longer it sat in the steaming water the more likely it was to be good. Heating the sauce up was a little beyond his reach just then, but fortunately Eddie was quick on the return.    
  
"We didn't consider garlic bread," Richie intoned, his expression sorrowful as he widened his eyes and pinched his mouth into a small O. 

"I don't think I need to disinfect it," Eddie murmured, mostly to himself, as he hopped to sit on the counter, clicking open his little first-aid kit. He was already unwrapping a bandaid, set to task, making a point of not looking at Richie.

Pressing his glasses back up his nose, Richie held his breath, trying to convince his frequently useless mouth to do something a little more comforting and non-confrontational than he usually managed, at least as long as his brand-new, recently gagged and tackled boyfriend was looking so pointedly dejected. Especially about something that was absolutely Richie’s fault. Honestly, moments like this, he didn't even know what to do - no  _ beep beep  _ to say he'd crossed a line or risked too much - just Eddie's closed off face and averted gaze.    
  
Not even averted for a fun, adorable, flushed cheeks kinda reason. Just the kind that made Richie feel like he was alone on a dark and silent stage in a theater with no front doors and no one to hear him scream.    
  
"That's another one for the scrapbook, right?" he asked, stepping closer despite the practical restrictions of the grip on his hand that kept him just beyond that welcoming gap between Eddie's knees where he balanced atop the counter. "Second swipe of the V-card this month. Or is it a punch card? Grab five get the sixth free. You can have the rest of mine, if there's any left, amiright?" Shifting almost effortlessly between a few of his impressions - from Sean Connery to an ad voiceover - the trashmouth aimed for a smirk or glare, but Eddie was pretty focused on getting a bandage strapped to the bright red welt across the back of his hand.    
  
"We could do it in the bathtub next," Richie tried, his best attempt at helpful. "Contains the mess and we can rinse off as soon as we're done."

Eddie finally looked up at him, sour as ever. "Oh, yeah, why drown me in spunk when you can drown me in water.” The medkit snapped shut under his careful hands, and it was all the invitation Richie needed to crowd closer, situating himself between the bow of Eddie's knees until the press of the counter prevented him from moving any further.    
  
Freshly bandaged, his hands smoothed around Eddie's waist, flattening in the small of his back before the taller brunet pressed their foreheads together, smirking as he huffed an affectionate laugh. Even then, his heart pounded to the tune of  _ Please let it be okay _ .   
  
"Think I've missed enough perfect opportunities to drown you in water," Richie murmured, unable to resist the flash of memories, almost all of which included Eddie next-to-naked and dripping. It was almost enough to have his dick ready for round two. Only the ache of his burn and the raw state of his boyfriend's voice really stopped him.    
  
"Plus, you're so strong," he continued, melodrama increasing tenfold as he clutched them together, crouching down, his head and palms pressed against Eddie's chest like a properly rescued damsel on the cover of a dollar store novel. "How could I possibly manage?"    


The sound of Eddie’s puffed sigh reached him, and Richie imagined the ensuing eye roll from his perch on the warm fabric of Eddie’s shirt. "That’s enough, Miss O’hara. If you want this stupid macaroni you better drain it. And mix in some butter and cheese because I sure as fuck am not cooking the sauce now."   


"That sounds hard," Richie whined dramatically, face pinched in pathetic agony as his chin slipped further and further down Eddie's torso, arms stretching to keep his palms closer to his shoulders (or, rather, pebbled nipples just barely tangible through the fabric). Finally thumping to kneel, the brunet couldn't quite lower his arms, with splayed knees trapped in his armpits, squeezing his head.    
  
"Can I order a pizza?" he asked then, only to rethink it a moment later. "Well, can you order a pizza? Regina will assume it's a prank, if I call. Hell, I bet they'll think it's a prank just ‘cause it's your house," Richie shot to his feet again and clasped Eddie against him, only to turn and spin across the kitchen floor in absolute mockery of dancing while the shorter brunet yelled and yelled and yelled.    
  
"Mrs. K ain't ordered delivery since tryna conceive you, aye Eds?" he burbled aimlessly, wriggling his brows only to have his glasses slipping down his nose again before Richie pressed his lips to his cute, lovable, merciful boyfriend's nose. 

"You're so annoying!" Eddie snapped - and yet, capable of shoving Richie away at any time. But he didn't. Instead he wriggled close enough to get the phone, dial the pizzeria, living out Richie’s wildest fantasies. Namely, the one where he was forgiven far too easily.


	4. Chapter 4

Another ball plopped off into the gutter, traitorous and pathetic. This time, at least, Eddie had managed to get it more than halfway up the lane. 

"I told you we should have gotten bumpers!" he yelled, spinning on his heel so he wouldn't have to see his piss-poor result, even as the telltale rumble of the ball back behind the pins reached his ears.   


"Relax, spaghetti man, you're still doing better than Haystack, the cheating cheater who cheats," Richie called, tipping his head as Ben went on about the ramp being a “properly utilized tool” and “available here for exactly this purpose”.    
  
"Are you using your thumb?" Bev asked, leaning forward to reclaim her drink before relaxing against the half-circle bench that marked their rented territory, like a privacy fence in the middle of a crowded room. Now if only it was better at hiding them from sight. 

"I'm using my whole freaking arm for crying out loud!" Eddie threw his hands out to the sides, stuck standing there like a dumbass while he waited for his bowling ball, the only one that suited his strength and the width of his stupid hand, to roll back up onto the rack. 

“Use your  _ thumb _ !”   


"Wiggle your butt before you swing," Richie suggested, winking as his tongue swiped over his bottom lip. Eddie shot a glare in his direction - no different than he would have a year ago, which was comforting in a way. Besides kissing and getting his mouth fucked almost to death, nothing really changed.

The rack finally spit his blue marbled ball back into the land of the living, and Eddie claimed it before he could get his fingers smashed between it and the others. All his friends were looking at him now, all but choosing to sign, seal, and deliver a gutterball just by scrutiny alone.   
  
He stood staring at the ten pins before whipping over his shoulder to announce, "Go about your business!". Next time, Eddie swore, stepping forward on a fakeout to test his aim, they were going mini-golf, and he wasn't taking no for an answer.   


As if breaking his arm three years ago wasn't bad enough, Eddie almost broke all the bones in his fucking foot with his bowling ball when he jumped at long hands on his arms, closing on bare skin just under his sleeves. A glance over his shoulder revealed Richie - who fucking else - sidled up behind him, no concern for personal space. Jeez, Eddie didn’t even hear him come up.

"Elbow nice and straight, Eds," Richie murmured, his chin coming into line with Eddie's shoulder as his fingers cupped around the bend of his elbow - standing just a little too close for public viewing. "Not that  _ we _ are.”   


Eddie set his jaw in frustration, the antithesis to Richie, grinning and getting his jollies from every bit of contact that went unnoticed by the bored old man spraying shoes behind the front counter. Incentivized by every moment Eddie stood there not taking his turn, he shifted his hip bone against Eddie's butt, right where his waistband gave way to the small of his back.   
  
It was a little too much to ask that Richie couldn't see him flush, when it started in his ears, but Eddie kept his stance nonetheless. Even though that meant bending his arm where Richie touched him, like a button that had that specific purpose. Same with the curve where his shorts sagged a little against his ass, but that wasn't intentional. Getting all Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in the middle of the bowling alley.

“Don't let the ball whip around behind you, keep it right in line."   
  
"I know how to bowl," Eddie whispered curtly, tilting his head a little to the side, even though he probably should have been looking forward at the vinyl stickers around the lane, faded without the black light on. As long as he was subject to this though, he figured he might as well take advantage. 

"Wait, what was that first little bit of advice? Wiggle my butt?" Eddie bent at the waist, slowly, pressing against Richie’s groin, inconspicuous unless you were lined up with his back. There, it was incredibly conspicuous. "Like this?"

"Yeah, you get your chucks," Richie mumbled, tone a little ominous, and breathless. Side stepping enough to guide their elbows back, he did his best to block whatever line of sight there might be, his hand shifting from the steadying grip on Eddie's hip to the curve of his zipper, cupping through thick fabric to sensitive flesh and squeezing once. 

A shock vibrated from Eddie’s crotch to his feet in his rented shoes, making every muscle in his body go rigid. So much for knocking over a single fucking pin. It was his fault, he knew that - but it didn't stop him from being annoyed with Richie. Did anything, ever?

"Hey, you know what, if you get one strike I'll suck you off on the way home,” Richie snickered against his ear. “There won't even be a mess ‘cause some of us know how to swallow." He turned his head just enough to press a kiss against Eddie's temple before he stepped back, leaving cool air in his wake.

"It was a personal choice!" Eddie grumbled out through his teeth, trying not to fluster with the phantom peck against his brow. He swung his elbow out to jab Richie in the ribs; if the ball fell out of his suddenly clammy hands and landed on his foot, so be it.    
  
"Hey horndogs, can you play the damn game?" Stan called from behind them, resulting in a smattering of snorts and chuckles that must have been bated for a couple minutes now. "If I wanted to watch softcore porn I would have stayed home."   
  
"Aw, Uris, don't get jealous, I've got plenty of cock to go around," Richie cooed.

"Shut the fuck up, both of you!" Eddie swung out his arm abruptly, negating all the finesse he had gathered in the last minute, however playful it had been. A handful of pins clattered to the floor in the corner of the lane before the ball rolled off into nowhere.   


"Good pick up!" Richie called, offering two thumbs of approval. He was next, strolling to retrieve his ball, taking his good old time. 

Eddie had to wait six turns before embarrassing himself again. His stalk toward the bench and his cup of root beer stumbled to a halt as Richie clapped a palm across his butt, sparking him still for a moment, casual as a celebratory hand grab in a sports game. Well, technically, it was a sports game.

"I call this one, Taco Regret," Richie intoned dramatically, taking up his ball in one hand with only two of the holes. A few running steps toward the line preceded his jump-turn as he swung the ball up and then back, right between his own legs - spitting a raspberry all the while.The pins smashed and scattered across the polished wood, and Richie threw his arms over his head in triumph before pointing a finger at Stan, their diligent scorekeeper.

Eddie rolled his eyes, sucking down his soda like he hadn't just been consensually molested at the bowling alley. One down, five to go. And like, eight more matches - right? He wasn't smart enough to do the math in his head for the seven of them. Especially not if Ben got gung-ho about a rematch in the homestretch.   
  
"I'm going to the bathroom," Eddie announced, hopping up the two steps that divided the little worse-than fast food restaurant and check-in counter from the actual lanes. "Please, everyone, take your time." Hopefully, by the time he trotted in and out of the men's' room, Bill would still be working out the physics of his arm arc.   


The good thing about a mostly empty bowling alley was that the bathroom was even more likely to be vacant, and Eddie had his choice of stalls. On the off chance that there were none, he always made due at the urinal. Luckily, he didn't have to this time - and thank god, because they didn’t look like they had been disinfected any time recently.   
  
Just when he had locked himself in, turned around, unzipped his fly, and gotten himself situated, the door banged open on the other side of the restroom. Eddie could only groan inwardly. If the last few years of his life had been anything to go by, he still couldn't piss when people were around. For a while, he did alright, since whoever waltzed seemed to have the courtesy to be quiet.  
  
Until a dark mophead popped over the stall door, scaring him half to death. 

“So you do piss standing up! Bill owes me a dollar.”

What was it with Richie and invading his privacy today - well, actually, that was everyday.

"Wow, you didn't have much faith in me, didja?" Eddie turned his head toward the wall in front of him, when he could feel the pipes stopping up from performance anxiety. "Well, great, now for our next date we can each get a gumball."   


"Course I had faith in you," Richie argued primly. "If I didn't, I'd have a camera, but who knows if Bill will even take my word for it."   


Apparently, contrary to popular belief, the trashmouth could recognize a few social cues here and there. Surprising enough to Eddie when Richie dropped out of sight, but a welcome relief all the same - in more ways than one. Maybe, it wasn’t that Richie couldn’t recognize them, but just chose to ignore them instead.   


"When you're done, you wanna make out?" Richie asked as Eddie zipped up and kicked the flusher on, from the other side of the stall wall. The short brunet was silent and thoughtful for as long as it took the whoosh of water to rise up and die down.  _ No, ew, gross _ was not the first answer that came to mind, surprisingly.

"With the guys out there?" Eddie asked (though it had never stopped them before, in certain cases), unlatching the door to carry himself over to the sink. Whatever happened, he still had to wash his hands. "What if you miss another turn to cream everyone in bowling?"   


"Given the choice," Richie answered, hurrying to catch up, "I'd cream you every time, Eddie dear." When he got close enough, he came around Eddie, and set his chin on his shoulder with a relaxed sigh. Long hands slid around the front of his loose t-shirt, flattening over each other around Eddie’s stomach.

"Plus we can be quick. I know I'm basically irresistible but you've got a strong will. Besides you just pissed so it's not like we're jumping straight to oral, I just wanna see you blush for a moment while I hide some more marks under your shirt for that geezer behind the counter to not notice at all."

Eddie pumped three squirts of soap into his hand, determined to scrub for the recommended twenty seconds, even while Richie got handsy. How easy it must have been to live carefree, without worrying about all the bacteria hiding on every surface of every object. Certain illnesses might have been bullshit, a whole fucking lot of them weren’t.   
  
Rinsing under the tepid water, Eddie glanced up into the streaky mirror. He saw himself, no surprise there, with Richie bent over his shoulder, hands roaming. This was probably what everyone else saw, when they had the chance to be all over each other, without judgement. It was picture perfect, as long as you didn’t ask the general public. All they needed were Santa hats to make a Christmas card. 

Eddie caught Richie's magnified gaze through the glass, and ducked to the sink after a second, before he could smile  _ too _ big. He shut off the faucet and shook the excess water off his hands, wiping them on his shorts that he could spin around in Richie's arms in lieu of abandoning him for the paper towel dispenser. Still a little damp, his palms rose over Richie’s T-shirt, flattening out the wrinkled graphic.   
  
"Fine, but only because Bill and Ben take literally forever." Without another word, Eddie pushed Richie off into the stall he had just come out of. The tall doofus tumbled back onto the toilet, spreading out just in time not to fall in. Thank god, because that would have been an awful way to start making out.

As soon as Eddie latched the door shut, Richie got a good grip around his narrow waist and yanked him backward. He landed sideways across Richie’s lap, his own hands flying to broad shoulders for balance.

"Hey there pretty boy," the shameless trashmouth murmured coyly, chin tipped up as they shifted and rocked, doubtlessly aiming for a kiss.

"Only you could get me to mess around in a bathroom stall," Eddie accused, almost affectionate, and caught Richie's teasing lips against his own before he could garner anything else from the statement. Richie hummed, arms cinching around his waist and Eddie had nothing to do but lean into that infuriating mouth.   


As soon as their teeth parted, Richie swept inside. Soda pop sweetness greeted Eddie against his boyfriend's tongue, and his mouth vibrated with another hum. With his eyes closed and Richie prodding while their lips slid around heady breaths, Eddie could hardly imagine the cramped little stall walls around them, or the fact that they were perched on porcelain. His sneaker twisted against the tiled floor when he adjusted to accommodate Richie's exploration, arms moving in conjunction, unable to sit still. Wrapped up like this, who would want to?   
  
It hadn't exactly gone flawlessly last time, but it had been dark, and there had been extenuating circumstances, and now Eddie didn't know what to do with his hands while Richie went bumping and feeling. He reached around to Richie's face, letting his knuckles brush against the smooth pale skin around his phenomenal cheekbones before plucking his specs clean off his face. Without having to worry about bumping against plastic and glass, Eddie sank forward for a deeper taste.   


Richie retreated for a breath, their teeth clicking together on the release. "Gosh Eds, just blindfold me already," he murmured, smirking as his chin tipped up for a softer kiss. In the same breath, his hands skirted up under Eddie’s shirt, cool against fevered skin. It was an effort not to squirm away, but press into them instead.

If Richie really was as bad as he said he was when it came to sight, (and granted, his lenses were thick as concrete) Eddie decided he could spare a small smile in the corner of his mouth at the remark, without the risk of being seen. There was enough room between the slight brush of lips for him to slip Richie's glasses on his own face, pushed into place with his fingertips. Much heavier, and bigger than his wire-framed bifocals.

Eddie leaned away, blinking rapidly, his vision all blurry shapes framed by black plastic. "Fuck, you really can't see," he said, squeezing his eyes shut and open again, as if that would help ruin his eyesight enough to see through the glasses. Hell, if he kept them on long enough, he might manage it, especially if the pinprick of pain building up between his brows was anything to go by.

Richie snorted, a chuckle shaking out of him. "Never heard that one before." 

“Yeah yeah yeah.” Eddie couldn't offer much else in the way of comebacks, with Richie all crinkling eyes and laughter in front of him, uninhibited by his distorting lenses. A visage he could see only if he tipped his gaze over the headache-inducing glasses. 

Unfortunately, Eddie couldn’t stare for long, with Richie scrabbling up his half-bared chest for somewhere to put his hands - or rather, his mouth. Plush lips closed around a dark nipple, and Eddie was not prepared for the sensation almost that had him jerking up out of Richie’s lap, prevented only by the hands around his back.

He puffed out a little breath, trying not to contort away. It felt like all the warmth suctioned out of his body, only to concentrate around the sensitive place where Richie lapped at him. And of course, the growing bulge in his shorts, against no fucking odds.   


Eddie tipped his head back, fingers rising to card through Richie's hair, dislodging tangles almost absently. "This isn't making out," he sighed - not quite an objection.

"Es ist besser als das!" Richie recited in his best, thickest German accent, lips sliding against Eddie's skin where his own spit had made it slick.

"Okay okay we all know you were an ace in World Languages, Richie." 

Eddie continued to stroke through dark curls encouragingly, his not-quite-raging boner trying (and succeeding) to rub against whatever surface it could find between the two of them. He probably should have feared for the cleanliness of his pants (again!) but he was a little too wrapped up in the clutch of Richie's hands and the needy work of his mouth. Put to use, for fucking once.

The scrape of teeth had Eddie tipping his head back even further, nose nearly pointed at the door behind him. He was trying very hard not to grind down on Richie, for several reasons, but that resulted in a need to move other parts of his body, antsy limbs seeking a distraction. It was working, a little, between carefully measured breaths that still came out somewhat ragged. But before Eddie could even register the sensation, or realize how far they'd slipped, Richie's glasses fell off his face.   
  
A dangerous, splintering clatter had Eddie's eyes whipping open, beset with perfect clarity again, which would have been great, if worry didn’t bloom in his chest like a fucking lotus flower. For a moment, he didn't say anything over Richie's administrations, wondering if he even noticed.   


But notice he did, hesitating around the flesh of Eddie’s belly as realization hit. Dammit.

"Cheater," Richie murmured into his navel. "You know I can bowl without them, right? You're evil plan was doomed from the start."

It was a real effort not to apologize immediately, since apparently Richie didn't care as much as Eddie thought he would. But it was still a drag, it had to be. Glasses were expensive. At least Richie wasn't Sonia Kaspbrak's son; if Eddie broke something so vital, she'd probably find some way to keep him from leaving the house for the next month and a half.   
  
Instead of giving a damn, Richie got Eddie spread a little further, caught off guard since he was still worried about the state of the glasses laying on the floor behind him. Schrodinger's cat, simultaneously broken and unbroken.   
  
At the very least, the incident managed to sober Eddie up. Though it was way too easy to indulge Richie's hot mouth in the air conditioned bathroom, shirt rucked up to his chin and everything. The tent in his shorts demanded attention just as well. 

"I can't do this again, Richie, not with everyone outside. I'm already an awful bowler, just imagine it with jizz all over my legs."

"I  _ am _ ," Richie answered. "And only some of it is yours." Lifting his head, he let Eddie’s shirt fall, cinching them chest-to-chest as he tipped his chin up for another kiss. Once again, he rolled up into Eddie’s hips, giving the poor hypochondriac a run for his money.    
  
"Besides, Eds, it's a bathroom stall. You could cum on the floor and no one would notice ‘til next week's mopping and even then a little bit of Comet will scrub that shit right up, right? Worse things have been done to these walls. Hell, even old Bob probably won't know jizz from loogie at mop pole distance and you know his prehistoric ass ain't bendin’ down to check. Who knows, maybe a good orgasm will make your swing better." Somehow, he managed to get all that out between nips and kisses.

"Yeah, I could contract seven different diseases too," Eddie retorted, bumping against Richie’s mouth. "Or you will, and then I will, because you can't fucking warn someone when you're about to cum like a decent human being." 

Richie was undeterred by his complaining, but that was nothing new. It was a feat, choosing decency over Richie's lips and his own nagging boner, but it was a choice Eddie had to make.   
  
"Do you know how many germs you can find on the bathroom floor alone?" he murmured, caught against Richie's cheek and hair. "Uncooked meat isn't the only place to get salmonella anymore, y’know. Not to mention paratuberculosis, and the common cold. And that's just germs, think of all the accidents that happen in the bathroom. Elvis  _ died  _ on the toilet..."

"I've got some uncooked meat for you right here," Richie offered, a little less gentle as he hiked his hips up again, a gasped groan falling out of him as he closed his teeth against the hollow of Eddie's throat. "Tell ya what, Eds, I'll getcha a big ol' box of rubbers. Clean and contained. I'll getcha off from here to Timbuktu and nary a splatter in sight." The trashmouth turned a bit Irish at the end as his voice grew more dramatic - and then more breathless. 

Eddie's eyes rolled up to the ceiling, effortless, despite the close-to-debauched state of his body rent over Richie's. At this point, he thought, tucking his face against Richie's hair as the tall brunet mouthed at his throat, Stan had probably finished his turn with less than stellar results, and Mike was sauntering up to give Richie a run for his money. That put Eddie next - which didn't matter really, because they were all probably snickering-slash-groaning about the fact that they had been in the bathroom for so long.   
  
The strained quality of Richie's breath poured into Eddie's thoughts, distracting him from their friends, snatching him back in to the moment that threatened to be loud enough to echo in the tiled bathroom.    
  
Then, he realized, maybe this was his chance to get back at Richie for sending him home with sticky thighs that night in the woods.   
  
"Really? For me?" Eddie gushed, feigning naivete as he lifted a little on his legs, so he could thrust down on Richie's crotch and give him the friction he was so desperate to achieve. "You mean I'll finally get to take my dick  _ out  _ of my pants?"

"Anything," Richie promised on a laugh, tense, Adam’s apple bumping over a moan. "It'd be out more often if you didn’t wear them so tight.” He was tipping, fast, and at least halfway behind him with no intention of finishing, Eddie got to see it all. The fluorescent lights in the ceiling gave him an all access pass to Richie's face as he bridged upon his tipping point, when it was in his line of sight anyway. He got a load of blown-red cheeks, melted chocolate eyes. Richie wasn’t a stud or anything but god if these moments weren’t gorgeous.

“Hell, I'll buy new sheets,” Richie went on, panting all the while. “Strip ya bare, lay ya down, we'll go to town. Just lemme keep the lights on." His mouth glided haphazardly against the bow of Eddie's collarbone, his head curled against his shoulder. 

Suddenly a long, stifled noise vibrated against Eddie’s neck, long fingers tightening and loosening on his skin. Richie had definitely cum himself, his whole body sagging against the toilet. Mission accomplished.   
  
"Ha! Payback," Eddie exclaimed triumphantly, planting his hands on either side of Richie's face, to tilt his slack head up so he could share his victory kiss with him. The trashmouth was speechless, unable to do much but shudder and breathe in the aftermath. 

Hot and humid in their stall as the seconds ticked by, it wasn’t all that long before Richie found his voice again. Never was. "Up, up, up, move your feet lost your seat,” he huffed, squeezing Eddie’s sides. “You'll have to wait until I'm craving Italian again since that's how we do recompense now. Shit I'll let you fuck down my throat too just to square us all up."

Eddie's own dick still pressed into his zipper uncomfortably, but it was nothing extreme, and if he thought about grime and muck and his mother long enough then he'd be limp and safe in no time. For now, he climbed off Richie, and that relieved the pressure already, since is legs weren't spread so close to a split (which he wasn't actually capable of).   
  
"Guess that means I have to be the idiot who burns his hand on boiling water too," Eddie mentioned, nodding as he took Richie by the wrists to help him up. "All squared up."   
  
He remembered just then, the glasses on the floor, crouching to his knees to pick up the plastic frames. Nothing had fallen out, but the lenses had fractured, zigzagging like lightning.   
  
"Sorry about your specs," Eddie said meekly, returning them to their rightful owner. Gripping the arms of his glasses, Richie slid them up his nose and offered a tilted smile, clapping Eddie on the back.    
  
"No worries, sweetheart, I got spares comin' out the ass on these. I'll just pop together last spring's prescription and they'll never know the difference." Thumbing open the lock, Richie released them into the bathroom proper. "If you were any better at bowling, I'd demand a handicap, but I'm pretty sure the crown will remain in the hands of the proper king today, one way or another." 

With that, Richie walked out of the bathroom, grinning with cracked lenses and jizz in his pants, not a care in the world. All Eddie could do was stare after him a moment, as the door swung shut. Not that they were secretive about their encounters in front of their friends, but this was a whole other level of disregard. He was gonna get grilled, either by Bill or Beverly, he wasn't sure which. The thought of them all trying to add up the broken glasses was kind of funny though.

Eddie shook the distractions from his mind, and went to run his hands under the sink again. He hadn't been touching the toilet or anything, but who knew if Richie had washed his hair today. When he was finished, he made sure he was all calmed down in his shorts, and hurried out to brave the scrutiny of their friends.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea for the first part of this chapter came from a tumblr post and I can't remember the op, so if any of you guys remember it from somewhere please tell me so I can give proper credit!

"Don't tell me you're picking up condoms,” Eddie warned, as they pulled into the parking lot at the grocery store. “I told you, won't fuck in the truck."

"M’not," Richie answered, boisterous as the syllable burst from his chest, like he had been holding his breath the whole time waiting for it. Eddie couldn't always be on top of setting him up for the best one-liners, after all. Sometimes you had to pave your own way.    
  
"This is where we're going." As if that were all the explanation required (and frankly, it was, as long as his date followed), Richie threw open his door and dropped down, skipping the gate step altogether before he reached into the back to pull his dad's navy blazer from the back seat. 

“Wait, seriously?”   
  
Richie spared a moment for the show of getting the jacket on, straightening the cuffs, folding the lapel just so - all while Eddie sat unmoving in his peripherals (just slightly headache inducing, blurry as these old lenses were). He offered a mock salute before turning in place, slamming the driver door behind him and striding purposefully toward the automated doors (trying not to daydream about being able to walk arm in arm instead).

Soon, the pounding of Eddie’s sneakers against the asphalt reached Richie’s ears, and he was rewarded as his boyfriend appeared at his side. Which was a close second.

"Why are we here?" Eddie demanded, as the doors opened with a swoosh, engulfing them in fluorescent lighting and the local Top 40 station. "Why are you dressed like that? Are you grocery shopping again under the guise of an outing? Because we told you last time at the laundromat, errands aren't fun."

"It's dinner and a show," Richie answered, tugging his lapels smartly as he lifted his chin, not quite bringing himself to sniff haughtily at his boyfriend's manic string of questions. Instead, he scoffed, swinging an arm around Eddie's shoulders for a moment just to satisfy that itch to touch him long enough to make it past the chips and soda. Grabbing a bag of flavored popcorn, Richie tugged it open without shame and cupped a handful into his mouth before offering it between them.    
  
Their destination lay at the end of the produce section, leading into the curve of the counter where all the fresh fish was displayed upon beds made of ice cubes and cold glass. Richie's upper body was just long enough to drape himself over the locked flip-up counter and nab the fish food shaker off the utility shelf around the pillar, sprinkling it across the open top of the lobster tank before setting a hand over his mouth to get that cinematic echo.    
  
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to -  _ THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURYYYY _ !" the accomplished impressionist began, his voice powerful despite some mild attempt to keep his volume reasonable. "In this corner, weighing in at seventeen ounces, we have  _ Snipper Waddleson _ , the reigning heavyweight champion, returning this evening to defend his title against newcomer  _ Gil McPincher _ ."

Eddie stared into the tank, watching the lobsters bumble around for the floating flakes. "Wait, that's not fair," he said suddenly, crouched in front of the class, pointing at the lobster Richie had chosen in his imaginary death match. "Gil McPincher is way smaller than Snipper Waddleson. That's an unfair fight."

"In this arena, there are no rules," Richie intoned, grinning against his pretend microphone of a fist. "Only combat, only honor, only glory. Fourteen lobsters entered, and will probably leave as they are purchased at the counter, but until then, NONE SHALL LEAVE."    
  
Striking a dramatic pose, palm to his forehead and heel tipped up just long enough to get bored of it himself (commercial breaks were hell), Richie took a deep breath to begin his introduction. "WELCOME BACK TO  _ LOBSTER DREAD DOME!!!! _ " Hands cupped around his mouth, the brunet mimicked a cheering crowd, clicking his cheeks and teeth around some drum noises before he launched back into the spiel. 

Just the look on Eddie's face while he tried not to laugh was enough to have Richie's cheeks flushing - his blood rushing - and an answering grin stretching his own lips despite his best efforts toward stoic.    
  
"You've seen him snip the unsnippable, you've watched him scuttle where no one has scuttled before, you've watched him take on that big bubbly thing in the corner and live to tell the tale. Now, feast your eyes and melt your butter. Gil McPincher is here to make L-W-E history! Weighing in at just thirteen ounces, he smashed through the ranks of heavyweight champions and contenders, breaking every rule. This bad boy has a bone to pick, and it's  _ Exo-skeletory _ ."

Even with the butcher a couple rows over staring at them, Eddie indulged the raucous announcement with enthusiastic applause, whooping with all the enthusiasm of a whole crowd. Heedless of any watching eyes beyond the gleaming gingerbread buttons currently staring up at him from beyond Eddie's flailing hands, Richie turned to tap more feed across the top of the opening, satisfied enough by the lazy shuffle to set the container aside and switch hands for his microphone. Fast as a Texas auctioneer, and with twice the southern drawl, Richie narrated a half-imagined fight, stumbling once or twice over the names he had made up on his way past the oyster crackers,. Otherwise, he was quite pleased with his performance.    
  
"Look at this carnage!" A flash of movement drew his attention before he actually saw the approaching grown-up, a scowl on the butcher’s face as he wiped his hands on a rag - like he was preparing himself for the ear grabbing. "For the love of God! Will someone stop the damn match? Enough is enough!" One of the lobsters, bless their little hearts, took a stumble trying to step over the other, and Richie huffed a chuckle, bending a bit to catch his hand on his knee.    
  
“Good God almighty, good God almighty, that killed him…as God as my witness he is broken in half!” 

The guy behind the meat counter smacked his hand on the table top, startling Eddie where he stood. "Scram already, and shut up!"   
  
"Come on, Richie, show's over." Eddie stifled his giggling behind his hand, grabbing the devoted announcer by the arm. "Don't want to upset the guy with a meat cleaver."

Richie laughed, microphone fist dropping to cup himself through his jeans as he intoned in his best Australian accent, "That's not a knife!"   
  
Eddie pulled and the butcher lurched forward, guaranteeing a chase they wouldn't like the result of. There were a lot of shitty things about turning eighteen, and real legal consequences was one of them - on top of the free pass to get your ass beat. The trashmouth almost missed the days when the most dangerous response to their antics came from Mrs. K.   
  
The two of them took to running as soon as he regained his footing, hip-checking a display of peanut butter. The half-empty popcorn bag fell out of his grip somewhere along the way, forgotten as they darted sideways through the too-slow sliding doors.   
  
"They'll never take us alive!" Richie shouted, jumping limbs first into the driver seat so he could crank on the engine and gun it backwards out of the parking lot before Eddie's seat belt was even in hand.

"Did we really need to run outta there?" the short brunet demanded, a little too loud when he finally managed to buckle up.

"Probably not," Richie answered on a laugh, not quite calm even though he tried his damnedest to sound like he was, lounging back against the bench seat with one hand on the steering wheel so he could drape the other arm over Eddie's shoulders again. Separated by the width of the truck's cab, it was quite an endeavor and almost involved tipping Eddie toward him.   
  
"Then again, he had a MEAT CLEAVER EDS YOU WANT ME TO DIE LIKE THAT AFTER ALL WE'VE BEEN THROUGH I GOTTA GO OUT A LITTLE COOLER THAN THAT!" Cackling uproariously then, maybe a little rushed on adrenaline, Richie threw his head back and tightened his grip on both the steering wheel and Eddie, tucking that chestnut head against his nose for a kiss to silky hair.   
  
"When's your bedtime?" he asked then, much quieter and calmer as his zealous (and probably uncomfortable) attentions were shaken off and pushed away.   


Eddie looked at his watch reflexively, as if he could tell time based on when and where Sonia wanted him to be. "Ten, the usual.”

"That's plenty of time," Richie decided with a smile, slapping his turn signal down as they approached the last stop light on the main stretch - the roads out here barely had a centerline, and no room for shoulders.   
  
"Hope you sleep naked," he exclaimed, filling the space as they fell silent so Eddie wouldn't get caught up asking questions again. "’Cause I couldn't find your pajama drawer, and I checked everywhere. Like, all six drawers. Does your mom keep them in her room? Are they rationed out seasonally?" Another turn took them up the same road he had taken the first time they were alone in the truck, though they didn't need to go as far - the movie tonight was stupid.   
  
"I sleep naked," Richie added, aiming for reassuring as the truck bucked and bobbled over the uneven path. "It's extremely freeing and I highly recommend it."

"So then all those sleepovers," Eddie replied, brows arched as he finally got a word in. "Just dealing with the fleece for the sake of appearances, or did you strip down in your sleeping bag once everyone was asleep?"

"Uh, clearly I stripped. Way before anyone was asleep, at least from the belly button down. Why do you think worming around was so common? I know I'm hilarious and adorable but I am a man of necessity as well."   
  
Turning off the dust and gravel excuse for a road, Richie navigated between a few trees before the foliage broke around a babbling area of the tumbling water that made up the creek part of Kissing Creek. A lot more available now that they weren't up on the movie thief cliffs.   
  
"Come on," Richie urged, turning the car off and jumping down before he shrugged out of his borrowed blazer. He jogged around the back of the truck to free the bungee cords and draw his (new!) tarp back to reveal the nest of (recently washed!) blankets and cushions pilfered from all over his house, and also Bill's when he needed supplemental squish.   


Eddie followed soon after, shutting the door behind him as he rounded the car. The sky hadn't quite transitioned to dark blue yet, still caught in a magenta color, but they were getting there. Judging by the look on his face, he hardly expected the plush surprise waiting for him.   
  
"Looks comfy," was the half-flattered, slightly fond statement that Eddie offered, crossing his arms in an effort to keep his tiny Grinch heart from growing too big, no doubt.

"Wait ‘til you smell it!" Richie declared excitedly, suddenly unsure of what to do with the sparks of energy that lanced through him with every heartbeat that Eddie spent smiling. Rounding the end, bending at the waist the last moment to dodge a hip shot by the tail light, the tall brunet tugged the tailgate handle and let the big flap fall down with a tinny clatter, the tarp draping off the end.   
  
"Your carriage, m’lord," Richie intoned in a haughty British accent, his arm outstretched to offer a hand up onto the high platform. Eddie accepted graciously, and Richie beamed the whole time he helped him up and over. Then it was his turn, with a little hop start as soon as Eddie was out of his landing space. Dropping down on the end, just to avoid landing on bent knees, the brunet pulled the tailgate up behind him, shrugging off some half-conscious concern.

Eddie turned over on his hands to sit with his butt on the plush setup, unlacing his sneakers. "I'm not getting naked, by the way," he added, when he dropped his shoes over the side of the truck bed.

"Pajama slut," Richie accused softly, his smile coy as he followed suit, shucking his Chuck Taylors before scooting and turning until he could align himself with Eddie's spot. After several test mounts, he wasn't surprised by how soft the organized chaos of coverlet and cushion beneath them actually was, but it was super comfortable nonetheless.   
  
"Your mom is sitting in her sweet ass nightgown fourteen minutes away from here right now, staring at microwave instructions for a sweet potato patty," the trashmouth mentioned in a matter-of-fact tone, arms slinking around Eddie's waist while he snuggled into the plush surface with his hips and shoulders and face, muffling his voice as he continued.    
  
"That means after full dark we got eighty three solid minutes of quote, stargazing, unquote, before we gotta book it like  _ Race to Witch Mountain _ ."   
  
"Okay, well, if 'stargazing'-" Eddie used air quotes, rather than repeating Richie outright, "is what I think it is, you'll be out in three minutes, so I hope you mean to really stargaze for the other eighty."   


"Oh please, this pony rides for miles. Journey not destination, baby." Richie sounded affronted despite his best efforts, a flush creeping up his arms and chest. Squeezing a little tighter got them close enough to tuck his face into the crook of Eddie's shoulder, and he twisted his head back and forth to brush his lips against the soft skin just above a cotton hem. "I didn't bring a telescope, by the way. I think there's an empty paper towel roll in the back seat though.”

“Sounds perfect,” Eddie murmured. 

A couple seconds of quiet sailed by, while Richie resisted letting his hands roam too much, since he didn’t want to start out the night with any swatting. Just for now, this was nice though. Even for a horndog like himself.

"Have you ever been with another guy?" Eddie asked suddenly, catching Richie a little off-guard. "I know you said you've administered some blow jobs in your life but I mean like, really been with someone. Had sex, I guess." 

Some more silence followed Eddie's voice, and Richie had time to wonder if the insinuating phrasing had been counterproductively misleading. Though, it seemed much more likely that the question had just been on the anxious nerd's mind before (or for a while). Knowing himself well enough to figure it should be easy to answer, the trashmouth found himself stalling anyway, setting his cheek against Eddie's nape for a moment to focus.   
  
"Like, pumped off inside of someone?" Richie asked, as if he really needed clarification. Actually, maybe he did. He wondered if girls counted, wondered if  _ those _ adventures counted enough to count - only to remember Eddie had specified  _ men _ .   
  
"By all accounts, no.” Gosh, there was too much counting going on. “Dick to lower intestine wise, anyway. I won't kiss and tell - gotta protect the innocent and unsuspecting - aheh, Mike, uh - but I may have stuck a finger or two inside the blushing rose on occasion." Chuckling quietly, more to shake them than anything, Richie hummed, settling before he added, "what about you, Eds?"

If only he had positioned himself in such a way that allowed for him to see Eddie’s expression. As if Richie could have been able to predict such anxious conversations when his boyfriend’s hair was so distracting and nice-smelling.

"Nah," Eddie finally uttered. "Just the Js. The big ones anyway. HJs and BJs.” Richie couldn't quite help a small breath, not quite ready to consider if it was in relief or just an ironically timed automated process. As if it would matter. As if anything mattered when he had Eddie against his chest, voice vibrating against his cheek. 

“All that stuff kind of tips past figuring out whether you’re into dick or not,” Eddie went on, “and I don’t think I could be with someone that way if I didn’t love them."

Three heartbeats went by, as realization sank in. Any sardonic remark Richie might have opened his mouth around was immediately silenced when Eddie leaped out of his grip, jostling the whole truck and suddenly perched up on his hands. 

"I mean, I love all you guys," he said in a rush, shrugging his shoulders up to his ears as his cheeks went red. Richie rolled to sit, supported on his elbow and head lax against his shoulder. "Not that I could have sex with all of you either though! I mean…Beverly’s out. Duh. And also Mike is so damn perfect looking that I'd get performance anxiety before he even took his pants off."

“Aw, you love me," Richie whispered, ignoring that whole defense just for kicks - voice much thicker and deeper than he intended. Not like he was choking up but damn, the words felt hot on his tongue. So he changed the subject.   
  
"Mike makes a yard stick look like your thumb! But you gotta be an extra level of gay not to look Bev in the mouth too much."

"I guess I'm on that extra level," Eddie muttered, drawing his knees up to his chest. "Didn't get called queerboy before they swirlied me for nothin'."   


"Ah, they were just jealous," Richie said, swinging his leg up enough to bump Eddie in the shin with his knee, and let the limb lay in a way that tilted him closer. "Least us queers admit when we like someone."   
  
Eddie was too far away. That was all the reason Richie needed to right himself, swinging his legs around to situate them on either side of the shorter brunet’s folded knees. Getting his arms around narrow shoulders  _ and _ neatly stacked limbs was a struggle, but Richie was stubborn, and settled for the hook of his pointer fingers behind Eddie's neck. It pressed their foreheads together nicely too.   
  
"I'm glad you're gay," he declared, offhand. "I can take most of the boys in the dashing good looks department, if not pure schlong power, but Bev has the puss market cornered and I dunno if I could take her even on a coin flip."   


Thank the Lord above (or below, whomever was responsible really), Eddie smiled. 

"Thank you?" he tried, laughing, much to Richie’s delight. Smiling, he attempted to rub their noses together - only to be disrupted by a strong push to his shoulders, sending him tossed backwards. His arms sprawled above his head, hands finding the hard edge of the truck bed beneath the folds of carefully placed blankets just as Eddie's knees caged him.

“You know what, I changed my mind. Kiss me, and take your clothes off while you’re at it.”

"At the same time?!" Richie demanded incredulously, though his hands got right to it, reaching for his button and zipper before Eddie could completely cover them with the taut archway of his own trousers.   
  
Soon as they were unbuttoned, the tall brunet yanked at his shirt, sitting up enough to catch Eddie's mouth with his both before and after the cotton swath dragged over his face, flung toward the back window. Wriggling out of his jeans, Richie took hold of Eddie's face to keep them both steady enough to line up, and hummed his excitement as their lips met a little softer, and then a little harder.

Out in the open, it wasn't quite as dark as the cab of his truck had been the last time they were out here, and Richie paused in his movements for a moment to look. Eddie drew his polo shirt over his head, whipping it away as if it had offended him, left in all his hairless peaches and cream glory. 

Having looked a hundred thousand times before, Richie shouldn't have been caught so breathless in the moment, especially with his boyfriend flopping down beside him, wrapped up in his arms. His for the taking.

"Just make sure you convince me I'm not gonna get bit by a spider," Eddie puffed as he unfastened his button and pulled down his fly noisily. "Or a tick, or a mosquito, or a snake. Or, fuck, stung by a bee..."   
  
Kicking entirely out of his jeans, Richie chuckled at the challenge, trying to imagine how to convince him that none of the summer bugs or other predators were going to touch them. An especially daunting feat when his thoughts were trying to fling themselves out the window as Eddie's trousers came open and were immediately helped down smooth thighs by his own hands.    
  
"Well, my snake doesn't bite," Richie began wryly, a little cowboy twang thrown into his tone as he grinned impishly and tipped his head enough to steal another kiss. "Besides, I cleaned out the whole bed. Vacuumed and everything. Even took some bleach to it. There's a tarp under us to keep the rust off. I hear it's good against weeds and infestations too so that takes care of everything without wings. So,I guess I'll just have to fight them off in single combat."

"Oh my God, Richie," Eddie gushed,tender as he kicked away his pants once and for all, "you did something considerate for once."

Beaming in response, Richie rolled onto his back just in time to catch all the miles of warm, bare skin that Eddie had suddenly become against him, long lanky limbs folding around bumpy ribs and a smooth waist, tightening until the breath was pressed out of both of them. Their alignment left the imprint of an unsure-but-game cock still cupped in that remaining barrier of cotton against his bellybutton, the bow of Eddie's ass pressing him just above the hip bones while elbows framed his face.   
  
Half-expecting to have his glasses removed again, Richie kept his eyes open just enough to gaze at Eddie through his lashes while their lips slid together. His teeth parted around a sigh before the squirrelly little shit was diving for a taste, and the taller brunet had to surrender to the darkness behind his lids, indulging instead the stirring glide against one another. His hands smoothed down Eddie's back, stopping when his pinkies brushed against the elastic waistband, bumping over firm cheeks to get a couple handfuls of tush.

"Don't jump to conclusions or anything," Eddie murmured against Richie's lips, between breaths, "but did you buy those 'rubbers' you kept going on about?"

"Well, don't jump to any conclusions or anything, but I have some in the truck," Richie answered - insinuating things he probably didn't actually want Eddie thinking about him, simply because he didn't want to admit that the only one missing had been used in an attempt to get extra slushie at the convenience store. 

"In that case, got any lube too? Or do you lean a little too hard straight to know why we might need that."

"You said no truck fucking!" Richie complained in defense of his own unprepared-ness, though after a moment to think about it, he wondered if there was a slight possibility. There had been a mad dash for a lot of things getting the truck together in the first place, and if he was lucky enough maybe past-Richie had kept future-Richie in mind when he was putting things away.

“This doesn’t count! Technically we’re not  _ in  _ the truck!” Eddie countered, pulling out all the stops to defend himself. “And I said no conclusion-jumping!”

“Lemme check, okay?” Richie set his foot flat on the cushion as a brace before he rolled them both over, flopping Eddie onto his back like Raggedy Andy. In moments - nearly stark naked - the tall brunet was up and over the edge of the truck, catching himself on cool grass before he yanked open the passenger door and started rifling through the side compartments. His box of Trojans was tucked neatly inside, and stuffed down the side of the open lid, was, in fact, his sample bottle of cherry-flavored sex lube. God bless adult stores that let you in without checking your ID when you're banned from the pharmacy.    
  
"Ah-ha!" He held the whole box up like an Olympic trophy as he set his foot on the lift step, and threw himself back over the edge of the bed. Landing and rolling in the soft coverlet was an outlandishly pleasant experience, especially when it ended with him knocking playfully against Eddie.    
  
"I didn't spring for any magic warming stuff," Richie warned, as if that were the most daunting thing about this whole endeavor. "But look, we can have purple and blue dicks!" 

"Fancy," Eddie murmured, pilfering the contents of Richie's hands to get a good looksie. "Dumb old see-through is  _ so _ last year."

"Only the best for my Eddie," Richie intoned sweetly, pressing a freshly-emptied hand to his chest in a gesture of sincerity, even as he hummed a chuckle to himself. "Do with that what you will. They didn't have Magnums, so if my dick goes limp from constriction, it's definitely not my fault."    
  
He was probably talking too much about this like it was a certain thing already, especially considering Eddie's reminder about conclusion-jumping, but the brunet couldn't quite reign in the energy that had suffused him in the meanwhile.    
  
Might be able to redirect it, though, he thought, dropping down onto his elbow, only to wriggle into the space between Eddie's arms and bent knees. Wrapping snugly around a narrow waist, he pressed his mouth to bared skin, cheeks hollowing now that there was all this expanse of flushed pink skin for him to mark and mottle and nibble. Anything to get his boyfriend trembling.

"Oh, right, it's really only  _ you  _ I have to worry about getting bit by," Eddie said affectionately, dropping the supplies to curl his fingers over Richie’s shoulders, spreading goosebumps across his skin like milk on a tile floor. A laugh echoed in his throat and chest, while Richie fought the elasticity of his own lips, to keep his mouth pressed against Eddie the entire time. Rolling not quite effortlessly over the bends of his own knees, the lanky brunet wound up on his belly, his boyfriend half-pinned beneath him, and his arms half-pinned beneath them both.   
  
"Oh, you want biting?" Richie asked in a coy tone, his grin as wide and eyes creased as he braced his knees enough to shift up Eddie's body, his tongue poking out to glide the tip along unmapped trails. Before breath could really be drawn to respond, though, he closed his teeth over soft flesh again - hesitating only a moment before he pressed past that soft nibbling threshold. It was nowhere near enough to break skin (thank goodness) but it made Eddie's body jerk and that was at least four kinds of delightful.    


Having braced himself for a retaliation, Richie released the grip between his teeth only when Eddie  _ groaned _ . Richie’s jaw dropped open, eyes widening and pulse stammering the moment the sound broke from those sweet lips. Not just a sound, a very nice sound, a very sexy sound that made his dick twitch against his waistband and the rest of his skin do that warming the air around him thing.    
  
"Oooh, does Eddie sssecretly like the bites?" the trashmouth asked in a coquettish tone, almost choking on anything that even remotely sounded like a certain Italian pasta which would not be named.    
  
Diving face first into the next distraction, though, it took only a moment to gather himself enough to drop back down. Mouthing lightly enough to make a roulette out of his target, Richie scraped his teeth this way and that before finally settling on a practically randomly selected square inch of skin, biting down again, and again, and again, until his tongue laved over a pebbled nipple - dark eyes flicking up to watch Eddie's face, searching for anticipation or alarm or dissent - right before trapping it in the apex of his big front teeth.   


He got a shrill gasp in response, the body beneath his jerking abruptly. "Richie-!" It was either a warning or an elation, fuck if the person it was meant for could tell. 

Eddie's knees bent up around Richie, trapping him in place. All this, and he hadn't even touched Eddie's dick yet. There really shouldn't be any surprise that the high strung hypochondriac was sensitive - hell, the kid hadn't been allowed to leave his house for two solid weeks once because of a flu outbreak at school - but that didn't stop the wry-mouthed brunet from enjoying every moment of it.    
  
"I love it when you yell my name, Eds," Richie murmured smugly, smearing his own spit against his lips and nose as he smoothed down the abused skin of Eddie's chest. With warm legs clamped down around his waist, it was fairly easy to get his own knees beneath him, rocking forward into the angular bow of Eddie's thighs.    
  
"Does'at feel good?" he asked, not quite able to take the satisfaction out of his voice as he bent his head again, teeth trailing along the edge of a stark collarbone before tilting his head up enough to nip at the juncture of ear and jaw instead, tempted beyond any measure to leave a nice red welt right there. Where the world could see it. The very dangerous, rude world who didn't deserve to look at Eddie unless it was to admire the things that Richie had been allowed to do to him.    
  
Rolling his hips forward was enough to know that both of them had tipped past half-enthused growers and fallen straight into aching boner territory. And shit, if Eddie was going to let Richie get away with stuff, there was absolutely no reason to stop until he was stopped. Balancing on one elbow was enough to get his other hand between them, fingers curling around the dry cotton bulge before he plucked a bit teasingly at the waistband. 

Eddie sucked in air, or tried to anyway, and flailed one arm out for his khakis, weaseling into the pocket like he needed a quarter or something. Richie lifted his head when the rifling around turned into an inhaler to the mouth, with Eddie's whole body swelling up beneath him. Grinning, he geared up for some remark about taking his breath away - but Eddie beat him to the punch.

"Pants off," he huffed out, letting the inhaler roll out of his hand, forgotten and unnecessary. "I mean, underpants. Yours too."

"You got it, babe," Richie muttered in answer, practically throwing himself back and upright enough to get the stretchy cotton down his own legs and past the bend of his knees. He went up on one leg to shake it off the other ankle before collapsing back down, and reached for Eddie's undies as they shifted down his shins, helping to drag them the rest of the way off.   
  
"There he is," Richie murmured, surprised by the awed, affectionate tone of his own voice (especially considering he had intended something more boastful). Eddie Kaspbrak sprawled out, naked as a bear in the woods on a bed made of equal parts pilfered pillows and pickup truck, was beyond his imaginative ability. And yet here was Richie, graced with the visage by happenstance itself.   
  
Before he could be stopped, Richie dipped down to the curve of Eddie's thigh where leg met groin, squishing surprisingly soft (no doubt carefully trimmed) curls as his teeth clamped down. Eddie swelled against the press of his nose and chin with enough force for Richie to brace himself for balance, one hand rising to get a grip on narrow hips and flatten him down as his teeth released. If that happened every time, the brunet was going to be drunk on some weird sort of power in minutes, and poor Eds would be purple from nape to knees. A thought that had Richie rocking up onto his knees again to shift himself between welcomingly open legs, dropping dangerously to his elbows.   
  
Fuck but it was like his face was made to fit here, Richie thought, his open mouth going towards the crux of Eddie's groin, right where shaft burst out of bony hips. His chin bumped balls that still smelled like soap and baby powder.

"If you're looking for something, you might want to try a little bit to your right," Eddie breathed out, sounding more strained than teasing.

"This right?" Richie asked, tipping his head to drag his lips left against the smoother skin of the thigh against his cheek. "Your right or my right?" His lips vibrated with the sound of his own voice, breath billowing purposefully into the warm corner their interlocking limbs created. Eddie's knees bent up just enough for Richie to get his arms underneath, shoulders shifting against tensing calf muscles.   
  
"Down?" His tongue poked out enough to drag a wet stripe through the juncture of Eddie's groin, cheek gliding against the twitching shaft as he sunk lower, neck craned and shoulders bowed.   
  
"Am I doin it right, Eds?" Richie was just loud enough to be heard beyond the tiny nook he had tucked himself into, teeth scraping a tightening testicle before his tongue delved further.

Eddie groaned loudly, hitching up over Richie's shoulders, his entire body twitching, including his taut dick. "Sure, I guess that works," he wheezed out. "Whatever tickles your pickle."

“Golly gee, Eds.”

The heel to Richie’s spine was incentive enough to get a better grip on skinny legs, and he managed one, at least, his hand tucking into the crook of Eddie's knee to press thigh to tummy. Which really opened up the avenue he was aiming for, eyeing the shadowed sight before him. Then he was dropping forward again, only occasionally resisting the urge to grind onto the sheets as his tongue found that crevice beneath Eddie's balls and slipped further.   
  
There had to be just one part of Edward Kaspbrak that didn't taste freshly scrubbed or sterilized. There had to be. And yet! As Richie's teeth bumped against the meeting swells of plump ass cheeks and twitching testicles, all he got was warm skin and the not quite silver-filling-agony hint of a metallic, clean tinge. If the trashmouth knew anything less about sucking on orifices, he might be worried about blood.   
  
Using his elbow a little, Richie pressed Eddie's other leg more out of the way, watching the twin globes shift apart for a moment before he was diving again, lapping at the crevice on his way down, only to flatten his tongue against that hot and twitching pucker at the center.   
  
"Rich!" Eddie gasped, reaching to scrabble for purchase on Richie’s shoulders. Not even a second later, his breath left him on a shuddery exhale. Grinning against Eddie's ass might have been his best moment, Richie thought, only to stretch his tongue a little more, pressing that excellent button again, just to create the same reaction. With one leg balanced against his shoulder, he had a free hand to flatten against Eddie's stomach, his pulse hammering harder with every twitch and wriggle the squirming ferret failed to resist or restrain.   
  
Pressing further forward for another slide across the tense hole almost cut off Richie's air supply, and he shifted his hand down to get a grip on Eddie's dick, tugging it up enough to pull his balls out of the way, and tipped his head to the side a bit. It crossed his mind that there were better positions for this sort of thing, but Richie preferred pressing soft, trembling legs up and out of the way over separating long enough to argue adjustments.   
  
"Fuck, Eds," the trashmouth murmured against hot skin, his teeth scraping against the round walls against his stretched cheeks. He swept his tongue forward again, gliding across and then pressing into the tight, slick ring of muscles. Eddie tensed and strained with every administration, moans falling out of his mouth and right into Richie’s ego. At this rate, he wasn’t sure how much longer the little brunet would last.

If Eddie's body convulsing suddenly and then shaking itself loose around his face was any indication, then not very long at all.

The drip of hot cum slid over Richie’s fingertips where they had curled around Eddie’s dick, stalling his efforts. The trashmouth lifted his head away for a quick look at own handiwork; Eddie gasping for air and quivering under a splatter of his own orgasm was probably the best thing he had ever set his eyes on, and for a moment Richie could only be glad that he had kept his glasses on this time.   
  
"Now that, was beautiful!" Richie breathed, trying not to rub his own dick on the sweat damp sheets beneath him as he dragged one knee up. Drawing his hand away, he wiped it off absently on the blankets, and settled Eddie's legs more firmly on solid ground, before dropping lengthwise beside him.   
  
"Wonder if jizz makes as good a lube as lady jizz," he mused absently, tucking an arm under his own head so their faces could be closer together - and was blessed with the sight of Eddie pulling himself together from the afterglow. 

Richie was content to lie there for as long as it took his boyfriend to get his bearings, gorgeous all the while, face pressed against the covers like he might will himself to disappear into them.  _ No disappearing! _ Richie thought. Not yet anyway. They still had a month of this stuff, tops.

"...Richie?”

“Yes my sweet?”

“Isn't this Bill's duvet?"


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's take a break from the smutty stuff for a fluffy beach day ;)

As soon as the weekend came, the Losers Club crammed themselves into the Denbrough family minivan, since it was the only vehicle between the lot of them with enough room for seven, _plus_ a bunch of towels and bags, and an umbrella that kept knocking Eddie in the back of the head every time he tilted backward.   
  
Bill was their adamant driver, and Beverly had called shotgun, which left Eddie relegated to a middle seat between Richie and Ben, with Stan and Mike in the back. As soon as they entered shore town territory, he whipped out the SPF 70.

"A new study came out about an increase in melanoma in young adults as a result of prolonged sun exposure, just a fair warning," he let everyone know, smearing sunscreen across his arms. "I've got plenty if anyone forgot."

"Rub your white cream on me, Eds," Richie giggled, his hand sliding across the shirt-clad plane of Eddie's chest.

“You know I’m gonna have to!”

"Easy boys, I'd like not to take an elbow to the ribs," Ben warned, his hands moving to defend his bare chest, only to look like a mermaid who lost her seashells.

"I can't help it," the trashmouth complained dramatically, hitching his leg up over Eddie's knee. "He squeezes the bottle just right, I can't even look at his hands anymore without imagining them on my dick."

"So, just like ninth grade," Bev chirped from the front seat, feet perched up on the dashboard while she smeared herself too. Whether with cream or oil, there was no telling, but the ginger wasn't going to get the toasted marshmallows look she wanted anyway.

Eddie's blush spread under his layer of sunscreen. Maybe he should have prescribed _her_ a beep-beep. Instead, he just smoothed the white cream into his face, piling it onto the plane of his nose and cheeks, for good measure, and pushed Richie off him, since it was way too hot in the for any amount of contact.   
  
They were parked and unloading the car before it got too muggy, and a cool coastal breeze tickled the back of Eddie's neck as he hopped out, Stan prodding him to get a move on. It was like they were all emptying out of a clown car, for a beach-themed circus.   
  
"Hey!" As soon as Richie was out, Eddie went for his arm, tugging him onto the sand-gritty sidewalk, where apart from Bill paying the meter, there wasn't as much foot traffic. "I was serious about the sunscreen. Remember last time?" Richie burned like a lobster and couldn't be bothered to have common sense at the seashore, but Eddie slapped a cream white handprint against his skin as a preemptive measure, rubbing it in with his palm. If that didn’t work, he had a big tub of aloe for the ride home.

"You're so rough," Richie accused in a harsh whisper, grinning as he stepped closer. "Do it more.”

Maybe it would have been better just to let Richie cook under the summer sun, with only one arm spared from the risk of skin cancer.

"Me next, Mom," Ben teased, dodging a playful elbow from Richie, only to knock the car door closed as he lurched backwards. Bev yanked her arms out of the way, palms out and fingers splayed before she laughed at all of them, and bent to grab her bags instead.

"Don't tempt me!" Eddie warned, whipping his head around, pointing his squeeze bottle threateningly. "I'll do it, and you better hope I don't draw a dick in the sunscreen!"  
  
Ben backed off, still giggling to himself, and Richie stayed (relatively) still long enough for Eddie to get to his other arm, before he lost interest and they all headed off toward the dunes. Maine wasn't exactly a favored beach destination; most people tried to head a little further south, if they could. So it was easy to find a spot big enough for the seven of them. Always was.   
  
As Eddie laid down his beach blanket, someone's shirt slapped him in the face when it was cast aside onto the wind, and he heard the whooping and hollering of a herd of teenage boys running for the ocean. Imagine his surprise when he peeled Beverly's green tank top off his face.

"Come on, Eds!" Richie shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth, already knee deep in the rolling waves. "I'm so wet for you baby, I need you!"  
  
Eddie just got his shirt off to touch up the spots he hadn’t reached in the car, and had to squint against the sun to catch a glimpse of of his friends, tackling each other into the surf like they were trying to drown each other. Such a fate, he could not be promised to avoid if he went out there with them.   
  
But what the heck?   
  
"Don't get your trunks in a twist!" Eddie hollered back, setting all his stuff aside and wiping his hands down his knees before jogging up to the water's edge. He whizzed right by Stan, who attempted to ease himself into the cold water one toe at a time When he reached the rest of them, Eddie couldn’t quite will himself to dive under, arms spread out where the water came up to his knees.   
  
"Don't lose your glasses, Richie!"   
  
"Guess we're all a little too big to chicken fight now, huh," Mike huffed, wiping drops of water from his nose, while Eddie tried not to get knocked off his feet by the wave that crashed high enough to wet his swimsuit. 

"You ain't that big, Mikey boy!" Richie yelled, throwing down a pantomimed gauntlet before he shoved Mike with more gusto than was really necessary. "Come on, who's in? Eddie, ya wanna jump on this chucklehead or me? Final champions! Who wants to take the belt?"  
  
"Like you can lift anyone, noodle arms," Bev teased, splashing the row of them with a kick only to scream when it was returned with alacrity.

Richie struck a pose, nose tipped up with mock offense as he gripped his bicep with the opposite hand, arm curled up with a fist. "All this jacking off, I'm a regular Hercules over here. I got twice the dick to work with these days."

"You wish," Eddie scoffed heavily, arms folded together against the goosebumps pebbling up his arms. He couldn’t deny the little swell of smugness that bloomed in his chest when he got a few pointed laughs, since whether it was true or not, he remained the undisputed one and only authority on the matter of how much dick Richie was getting.  
  
"No one's jumping on anyone if we don't wade a little deeper," Stan piped in, coming up behind Bill's shivering form, apparently tired of lingering out of the reach of his friends. "Or have you never chicken-fought in the water before."   
  
Rather than contemplate the implications of the past tense of chicken fight, Eddie turned and poked Richie in his ribs, absently aiming for freckles. "Hey, there ya go. If you go deeper you’d be better at Hercules anyway."   
  
"Good idea," Richie agreed, launching forward as he bent to grab Eddie around the knees.

If he could count all the times Richie upset his balance, the number would probably go into the hundreds, but Eddie couldn't think of much of anything when Richie was yanking him out of the water to slap him over his shoulder like he weighed little more than a bundle of sticks. Knowing his own height and weight ratio, having been to the doctor's so often, he definitely did _not_ .   
  
"Grab yourselves a fresh one, lads!" Richie shouted, knees high and one fist pumped toward the sky as he trekked deeper into the tumbling waves.

"Hey! Richie!" He could do little more than slide his wet hands against Richie's wet back frantically, the world turned upside down, nothing to look at but Richie's ass. The uproarious splash of the water beneath him wasn't quite enough to drown out their friends' excitement, but it sure made Eddie pray Richie was strong enough to keep his head above water. If he was going to get carried at all, anticipating a chicken fight, this was not what he expected.  
  
Relief washed over him like the tide when Richie put him down, riled up enough to have his mouth open on a foul word when Richie pulled him forward by the face to smush their lips together instead. If Eddie's tight posture melted a little and his hands went around his boyfriend’s waist, it was because Richie was a rod of warmth in the otherwise cold ocean, and he forgot he was in public (though few others inhabited the beach).   
  
Suddenly a hand shoved into Eddie's back, toppling him into Richie, toppling them both into the saltwater, face first. Eddie flailed enough to get his head back up in a couple of seconds, hair plastered to his scalp, staring up accusingly through dripping lashes at Beverly on Ben's shoulders, laughing hard enough that their balance wobbled.

When Eddie came up out of the water, it wasn't quite of his own accord, rising as Richie's torso popped up underneath him, head between his legs. Without the physics-distorting properties of a large body of water around him, Eddie teetered a little bit on broad shoulders, dripping wet, half-afraid he'd slip off if he didn't lose his balance first. But Richie's grip was firm, and he had a bone to pick with Beverly Marsh.

"Get'em!" Richie yelled, advancing on Ben fists first while his elbows locked around Eddie's shins.

Eddie's arms rose in front of him as Richie lumbered forward as fast as he was able, locking hands with Bev before he could tilt forward too hard, or get a proper blow in. Her hair was still fairly dry, and he had a feeling she wanted to keep it that way.   
  
"Look, we all know you skipped gym to smoke behind the bleachers" Eddie grunted, as he fought to keep chipped nail polish fingers from getting too close to his face. “So you’ve got the upper arm strength of a ladybug. Leave this to me before you embarrass yourselves.”   
  
"As if, Kaspbrak!"

"You'll never defeat me, trashmouth," Ben declared dramatically, his face set in a confident smirk as he wrestled with Richie.

"So you're saying I should aim for more sensitive areas?" Richie bit out from beneath Eddie. As his hand broke free from Ben's grip, the blond ducked his arm to block some expected genital attack, but Richie had other plans. His free hand went higher, aiming for Bev's belly and sides with wriggling fingers.  
  
"Kick her ginger ass, babe!" he shouted while Beverly squawked, slapping his hand away ineffectually. All her flailing nearly pulled Eddie with her, but he managed keep his seat, against all odds. Richie's knobby fingers dug into the soft skin between her bikini top and bottom, and she tried in vain to squirrel away from the hands. It was a low blow - but in Eddie's favor, so he kept his mouth shut about it.   
  
If it were any of the others, Eddie would have gone for a swift shove to the pecs. Now though, he couldn't help but aim a little higher on Beverly, even though she probably wouldn't have cared beyond the defeat he was about to inflict on her. Eddie was the last person to touch her with malicious intent - malicious beyond knocking her off Haystack's shoulders, anyway.

Without hesitation, except in waiting for the right moment, Eddie thrust his splayed hands against her shoulders, close enough to feel the force of the push. Sure enough, Bev flailed for two seconds before splashing back into the water, taking Ben with her when she cinched her legs together.  
  
"Ha!" Eddie pumped his arms in the air, laughing against the chill in his skin. "Down for the count!" Richie celebrated as much he could from beneath him, gripping knobby knees as he turned to face the remaining losers. Stan stared, unimpressed, while Bill and Mike just smiled like patient dads at a dance recital.   
  
"Come on, bitches! Is there not a single pair amongst you? I will mushroom stamp each and every one of you!"   
  
"N-nn-need you to take ab-buh-bout ten to fifteen percent off th-there, Tozier," Bill muttered wryly, glancing at Stan's sourpuss before he turned toward Mike, brows rising in question. Mike, bless him, beamed, hands moving from their perch on his hips as he sank into the water enough for Bill to mount up.   
  
"Bring it, Billy-ma-boy," Richie purred. "Let's show the Jew what a real cock fight looks like." 

With Mike on the bottom, the Adonis of the Losers Club, Eddie wasn’t so sure about this one. Even with Bill’s skinny chicken legs bringing truth to the name of the game, he had a solid foundation. This kid wrangled livestock for half his life.  
  
Nevertheless: "I'm gonna kick your ass!" Eddie shouted exuberantly, shivering atop Richie's shoulders, assuming a position that more resembled karate than any type of wrestling, as Bill came forward on Mike's shoulders. With no danger zones to be wary of, he flung his arms forward, only to be caught by dumb ol' Denbrough. If need be, Eddie wasn't above landing a swift kick to the crotch. 

"Give me all ya got, big guy," Richie growled.

“Give it up, Richie!”

“Make me, Mr. T!”

If there was one thing Eddie could count on, it was Big Bill being just a little wobblier than he was, since weight distribution hadn't been kind to some of them. Short, skinny, take your pick. Being the shortest had its advantages, though, even if Bill could still bend his arms between them while Eddie held his ramrod straight. It was a mixed bag.  
  
So long at Eddie didn't glance down at Richie locking arms with Mike in all his buff glory, he was fine, free from any pesky thoughts that might distract him while he was trying to unseat Bill.

All in vain, it seemed, when he lost his balance and crashed face first into Denbrough, shrieking all the way down (though he would never admit it when he resurfaced).   
  
Eddie had zero qualms about using all three bodies under him to grapple his way to the surface, and would blame asthma before he blamed truer intentions, gasping when his head broke free, hair stuck to his forehead and dripping into his eyes.   
  
"They fell first, we were on top of them!" he insisted, pointing in every direction until he could point directly at Stan, Bev, and Ben, as the Bill, Mike, and Richie gradually got their bearings. "I know you all saw that!" 

An argument didn't quite erupt the way Eddie wanted it to, but the result was pleased and happy and giddy anyway, so how could he argue with that? He barely had the water out of his eyes before Bill shoved him playfully, and then it was a mad dash to get one or the other under the arm to noogie the shit out of.

“Oh fuck.”  
  
Frantic splashing beyond the slap of the rhythmic waves caught Eddie's attention, enough to look up over the pale plane of Bill's back, to find Richie searching the murky green waters, utterly glasses-less.

“Well, shit,” the trashmouth murmured, resigned after no more than eight seconds.  
  
"What did I tell you!" Eddie called over, untangling his limbs from Bill’s. Unable to help but note the irony that something had happened to Richie's glasses _both_ times Eddie had been on top of him. 

“To put on sunscreen!” Richie whined. Eddie opened his mouth around a contradiction, but it was useless. Richie's glasses were as good as gone, might as well have never existed in the first place. Hopefully a crab would make good use of them, and no turtles would try to eat them.

"They're gone forever," Richie announced, finally turning to launch himself at the others, gliding into Eddie and tucking his arms around his waist - only to clamp down like a startled octopus.  
  
"Eddie, I can't see, what'll I do how will I live?" he asked, feigning panic as he smushed his face against Eddie’s shoulder. The shorter of them stumbled dangerously under the added weight.

"Guess you have to die," Eddie declared in a put-upon manner, pretending he totally wasn't moving Richie's arm up his torso where he needed the insulation way more.  
  
"Maybe you should think about getting contacts, Rich," Beverly chimed in.   
  
"I don’t think anyone wants to see that all the time," Stan put in, as he tried valiantly to prevent Bill from shoving his curly top under the water to face the same wet head fate as the rest of them. 

"Whatsamatta, Stanley?" Richie demanded, grinning and wiggling his brows, despite the circumstances. "Can't handle all this?"

Leaning against the enveloping hold of Richie's arms, Eddie watched Stan roll his eyes, and finally succumb to full water exposure when Bill got him down far enough for a wave to smash into him. He'd have to tell Richie he got eye-rolled later.  
  
Another wave rushed by and slapped Eddie in the face, and at this rate he decided he better take a break before he wound up having to reapply all the sunblock on his face.   
  
"I'm out!" he declared, raising his hands in front of Richie's arms, since that was as high as they would go in the trashmouth's grip. He pried wet hands away from his arm, and took one to lead back to the shore. "You come too, don't you wanna go out a little more exciting than getting pulled out on a riptide because you couldn’t see it?"   
  
"Are my hands even pruny yet?" Richie asked, sounding devastated - only to opt for sultry a moment later. "Are ya gonna rub more lotion on me, Eds?"

Eddie had suffered worse as far as Richie's dramatics went, but he didn't exactly expect to have to drag his boyfriend along the water like a boogie board he'd gotten tired of, when he slouched low enough to be lagging behind. It probably would have been quite the spectacle without the ocean lapping at his waist (and then hips, and then thighs, as he managed to get closer to shore), but then, he probably wouldn't even have been able to haul Richie without the support of the sea.

"Bill, Bev! HELP! He's trying to protect me from skin cancer!" A slither up Eddie’s thigh brought him to a jerky stop, afraid some slug or leech or bacteria-infested seaweed had clung to his leg. But it was just Richie, poking his fingers around. Basically the same thing, splashing and flailing and whining all the while.  
  
"Jesus, all you had to say was no thanks!" Eddie yelled, relinquishing Richie to the briny depths (of a few feet or so), so he could throw up his hands and slosh off. "Have Beverly babysit you, _I'm_ putting on more sunscreen!"

"No! Please, she uses the paddle.” At this point, not just in the summer but in the last several years as well (which put a whole lotta things into perspective), Eddie really should have expected Richie to follow him anywhere like this, whether dragged or even wanted around at all. Richie caught up to him before he even started to track wet footprints into the dry sand, without even glasses to help him see.

"You're so pretty in the sun," Richie murmured, smudging kisses against Eddie's cheek as he retrieved his towel, and lowered to sit. Even with cold lips, Richie’s kisses were nice, but the thick tendrils of wet black hair tickling Eddie’s neck were not fun at all.

"That's so nice, coming from a guy who can't see for shit," Eddie griped, teasing just a little, shoving Richie's face away so he could dry off properly. Even then, his needy boyfriend stayed awfully close.  
  
Gradually, everyone came out of the water, starting with Beverly and ending with Bill, while Mike tried to figure out if it was against beach rules to start a fire between the seven of them. They were all lounging one way or another, slow cooking and lazy in the hot sun.   
  
"Hey Bill, do you want to see _Honey I Blew Up the Kid_ with us tomorrow?" Beverly asked, the first she'd moved or spoken since huddling under the umbrella with Ben. "It's gonna suck, you'll love it."   
  
"C-can't tomorrow," Bill sighed, pausing just to scrub his towel over his head. "My m-mom's t-taking me to g-get last minute dorm st-tuff."   
  
"Ugh, I've still gotta do that," Eddie groaned, throwing his arms up in the air, only to immediately pull them back down to wipe excess sunblock off on his towel. "I think my mom's actively avoiding it, but at this rate I'll be dragging my comforter set back and forth whenever I come home." A murmur of agreement rang out, though Richie kept quiet, lying beside Eddie with his arms over his eyes. He was going to get the weirdest tan.

"Man, we shoulda brought a volleyball or something. A Frisbee," he mentioned, taking a hard left turn into completely unrelated territory with the conversation.  
  
"Why, do you want to try playing fetch?" Stan asked dryly.   
  
"I do like balls in my mouth," Richie answered in a matter-of-fact tone, grinning between his wrists.  
  
"That's fucking gross," Eddie retorted incredulously -  though, unable to keep from drawing back to that night in the bed of Richie's truck. As if to smother those thoughts in such a public setting, he threw his towel over Richie's pleasantly calm face. Wasn't like he could see anyway.   
  
"Guess you boys will have to settle on leapfrog," he mentioned idly, finally finished with the sunblock so he could lie back in peace.

Eventually, Richie grew bored enough with sit-and-relax time to get up altogether, and Eddie took that as his cue to get up as well, if he really wanted to protect himself from the sun. He checked first, to make sure Ben and Beverly weren't getting handsy under the dome of the rainbow beach umbrella, before scooting into the shade beside Haystack, where it was much cooler. From here, with his knees hiked up to his chest, he could see Bill and Mike swimming against the rush of the waves, and Richie and Stan hard at work with some kind of sand sculpture.   
  
Everyone was comfortable, doing their own thing together, and it was all Eddie could really ask for. These moments were starting to run out, after all.


	7. Chapter 7

A couple days into August, Richie realized he'd completely neglected to see the new Batman movie that had already been out all of July. Between cramming in as many summer adventures with his friends, and exploring this little thing he had with Eddie before time ran out, he must have missed all the posters.   


That being said, he was quick to remedy the situation, content to pay for two tickets at the Aladdin when Eddie got sick of the Makeout Point Drive-in - until he got a call from his very own beloved, whilst unloading groceries for his mom.

"Hey, buddy," Eddie murmured over the line. "Got some bad news. I'm quarantined for no reason, the Iron Lady said so. I sneezed  _ three  _ times at dinner. It’s not my fault she’s got terrible aim with the pepper grinder! Doesn’t mean I’m dying!" The sound of Jeopardy on the television set in the living room at Eddie’s house just barely reached Richie’s ears. "Gotta cancel for tonight. You know how it is."   


"Aw, but I already shaved the girls," Richie complained, head tipped against his shoulder to hold the phone while he rushed through putting the ice cream away. Not that he needed to (rush that is), since Mrs. K was pulling a Shawshank on them.   
  
Actually, that gave him an idea. Though, drilling through the wall would probably be frowned upon by most involved parties. Eddie had made his opinion of shit pipes pretty clear over the years, too.   
  
"Come on, Eds, how hard could it be to sneak out? Your mama's so fat she sits around the TV. I doubt she can even see past herself."

"Last time we did that I was shitting and shaking the whole time," Eddie replied flatly. "And if she thinks I came down with something, she's definitely gonna be up here, at least before she goes to bed. Do you know how much chicken noodle soup and cough medicine I've consumed over the course of my life against my will? A lot, Richie."

"Is she accepting applications for in-home nurses?" Richie asked, bending into the refrigerator and nearly hanging himself with the spiraled cord. "I'm sure my mom's still got a penny striper costume around here somewhere. I'll bring my own stethoscope."   
  
Richie ducked as his mom held the cord up enough to let him step underneath, disappearing with a tap on his back to grab more bags out of the car.   
  
"Or I could disguise myself as a giant teddy bear. Does your mom still gas those for mites? Maybe I should get some scuba gear, just to be safe."  
  
"You turd, why don't you just come through the window? It's not like you've never gotten your scrawny butt up here before. It’s not Michael Keaton and Michelle Pfeiffer, but we’ll manage."

"Aw, Eds, you're cuter than Michelle Pfeiffer anyway," Richie murmured, tone caught between affectionate and amused. He lined up cereal that he might not even have time to finish (or might have too much time to finish) above the freezer before mom set down the last bag, wiggling her fingers at him in a wave before drifting toward the living room like a silk scarf on the clothesline.   
  
"I'll bring my PJs! Do I need a sleeping bag? Nail polish? An invisibility spell?" Laughing, Richie stuffed the last of the cans into the cabinet and then balled up the bag for the tube, ducking in on his mom in the living room before sprinting up the stairs, only to remember at the last moment that he was on the corded kitchen phone.   
  
"Is it safe in the daylight?" he asked, rubbing his neck where the cording cinched as he stumbled back down the stairs. "Should I bring snacks?"   


"If you're nervous you can wait until after the sun goes down," Eddie answered. "I don't care what you bring either. Yourself, ten pounds of gummy bears, an entire encyclopedia set, one single sock, I don't fucking care. Just make sure you can get up the tree, and don't make a ton of noise. Don't be stupid." With that, the line went dead, leaving Richie with nothing but the tone, and a memory.   


"Yes, dear," he sighed to himself, smiling like an idiot as he finally untangled and hung up the phone. 

It was a twenty minute adventure to get a backpack together - more effort spent searching his half-dismantled truck bed for the long lost condoms than finding his flannel bottoms just in case Mrs. K dropped the temperature to fight off a fever.   
  
"Mom, I'm goin’ to Bill's for the night!"    
  
The problem with sneaking in broad daylight was that it made it a lot harder to do anything in the open. The Kaspbrak residence had some of the nosiest neighbors, no doubt bribed for frequent reports by the hydra-beast that was Eddie's mother. Even the hedges were irritably trimmed, but Richie did an okay job of looking like he was trespassing  _ through  _ rather than  _ into  _ before diving out of sight along the house. Climbing was a lot easier when he wasn't drunk, too.   
  
This time, instead of shoving the unlocked window up with his whole body, Richie pushed down on a long limber branch, tapping leaf heavy sticks against the glass like fingernails. From the other side, Eddie jumped beside his bed, soundlessly from where Richie was looking, and whipped to face him with his usual Kaspbrak-grade glare.

"Don't ever, ever, _ ever  _ do that again," Eddie bit out after he'd crossed his room and thrown open the window, hauling Richie through by the collar of his shirt.

"Be gentle with me," Richie whined softly (not so dumb that he would yell on his way across the threshold) and caught his feet on the chair as he climbed through - stumbling and clinging to Eddie's shoulders all the while. "I need a safe word first."    
  
Shucking out of his backpack, Richie kicked off his shoes right away, trading the space being taken up by his pajama bottoms and Goldfish in his bag to keep his sneakers hidden. Lucking out a second time with Mrs. K's observation skills seemed unlikely and Richie wasn't about to risk a full and enforced banishment.   
  
"You're supplying the stripper pole right? It's in my contract," Richie chuckled, leaning over to steal hello kisses while already stripping out of his jeans to trade for flannel.   


"No pole," Eddie murmured dryly. "We run a frugal operation over here. We can barely afford whipped cream to spray the dancers with." Apparently wanting in ardent affection, he threw his arms around Richie's shoulders and pulled him down to lock lips properly. Pants around his ankles and flannel in hand, Richie closed his eyes when the trap of Eddie's grip held him steady, head tipping to indulge the slow glide of lips and tongues that were getting pretty good at moving together - if he did say so himself. 

Next thing he knew, Eddie was prancing away, bouncing onto his all too familiar bed. "Sweet," he inquired, holding aloft a box of Zebra Cakes in one hand, "or salty?" and a Family Size bag of Utz chips in the other.

"How can a man choose?" Richie asked in his best Italian accent, fingers rising to pinch in front of his mouth as he finally kicked out of his jeans and managed to stick his feet through the legs of his pajamas. Taking up his box of Goldfish, he toppled himself onto the mattress, rolling into place beside Eddie as they knocked shoulders.   
  
"I brought savory!" he declared proudly, beaming rather smugly. He plucked the zebra cake out of his boyfriend's hand.   


"I think salty and savory are the same thing in this context," Eddie muttered, mouth pinched. Richie hummed his disagreement, glancing around in search of a  _ Culinary Arts for Dummies _ book - though Eddie failed to even ask what he was looking for, so he gave up in favor of getting a cake into his mouth instead. It was a cheap joke anyway.

He offered his Eddie some Goldfish, taking a handful as they settled better together. "Sorry to have deprived you of seeing a buxom blond decked out in a leather catsuit," Eddie mentioned,  _ sounding  _ at least a little sorry, all things considered.

"Are you sorry enough to put on a leather catsuit?" Richie asked, his voice low and a little hesitant (somewhat because his mouth was full of cream and cake) as his eyes widened in dramatic anticipation. "If not, I do have an old Robin costume that might fit you, you know, if we're doing costume ideas. Not that you need to be in spandex. I spent too much time imagining you naked to introduce outfits just yet anyway." 

Dropping sideways against the shorter shoulder, Richie nudged his head down until he was sorta nestled, only to tip his head up enough to nip at the soft skin of Eddie's neck, before he sat up to finish his cake. God it was hard to double-task.

Eddie wrinkled his nose. "Wait, I'm sorry. Rewind, who the hell chooses Robin when they could be Batman? Better yet, who whipped your ass enough to get you to agree to play sidekick? Am I forgetting a particular Halloween or something?"   


"No no no," Richie muttered, a hand rising to stop the idea before it had a chance to cement itself in his boyfriend's mind. "I bought it for Bill the year we all decided to be Goonies instead. Now I keep it strictly for sexual reasons." 

Before anymore argument could unfold about the matter, Eddie popped up with an  _ oh! _ , distracted from his very own disagreement, struck by some idea Richie wasn’t privy to. His boyfriend got out of bed, shoveling another handful of fish-shaped crackers into his mouth.

"I forget, do you like Wham!? Whatever, it doesn't matter." Eddie scooted to pull his boombox out from under his bed. "My cassette collection is limited, so bear with me." Fiddling a bit with buttons and dials, eventually he flipped the tape, and pressed play. Soon, George Michael's breathy cadence was inviting them to jitterbug.

"Dance party?" Richie asked, snapping in time to the opening a few times before bouncing to his feet to he reach for Eddie's hands, dragging him from the bed. "Come on, I can still hear Jeopardy from here."

As long as he kept his feet on the same spots on the carpet, he could move quite a bit without the floor making any sort of noises too. Eddie stood apprehensive in his grip, though, eyes at the door, and then the floor, waiting for the telltale sound of a disgruntled mother. None came, and soon, he was bouncing to the beat - however cautiously.

"Not much of a party," Eddie confessed.  
  
"Yeah, could definitely use some lights in here," Richie replied with a cheeky smile, attempting to pull Eddie forward and only succeeding in dragging himself closer instead. When did his tiny squirrel get so sturdy? Or maybe Richie was just a sucker for that pout - which he bent to kiss pointedly.   
  
"But we got snacks and drinks and I brought some porn," he continued, straightening to continue his dance even as he let one hand go to drag his abandoned backpack closer. "Wanna call Big Bill? Six to nine odds we could convince your Mom to leave long enough to have a proper one. It's too bad I never got started on those smuggling modifications we discussed, could do a whole speakeasy up here."

"Six to nine is two-thirds, Richie," Eddie said, setting his free hand on his hip, while Richie held fast to the other one. “And if speakeasies had been set up in teenage boys’ bedrooms, they would have gotten shut down. I don't know how many more times I have to tell you that my mom checks my room like clockwork. This isn't a collapsing 1920s democracy, it's a dictatorship." Golly, Advanced American History II had done wonders for Eddie’s conversation skills.

"That's why we need smuggling modifications," Richie answered, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. But the matter was reduced past pointless as he dragged his bag up onto the bed, dumping the remaining contents across the sheets. Keeping his grip on Eddie's hand had almost lost its purpose as well, but their fingers were comfortably cinched and warm, so he left them there.    
  
"I brought schnapps, since most of them smell like cough medicine anyway, but you can have some of my secret pocket whiskey if you ask really nicely," he mentioned, pulling out the collection of tiny unlabeled bottles that had been filled with various colors of liquor from his mother's holiday collection.   
  
Prying his carefully wrapped  _ Playguy  _ out of the flat inner pocket, Richie held up the plastic-protected periodical with a lecherous grin.  _ Six All American Fantasies _ scrawled across the top of the white cover in marching letters, with a half-dressed cop in uniform smirking at them.

Eddie whipped the magazine out of Richie's hands, as if it had personally offended him, flushed through his entire face. Brows rising for a moment, Richie resisted the urge to yank his hard-won magazine back, only because getting into a tug-o-war with Eddie over it was more likely to cause damage than success.    


"Only creeps and teenage boys look at dirty magazines," Eddie said, voice already inclined toward the shrill setting.    


Tipping his head down to look over his glasses, Richie brought his arm up, fist bent toward him while he stared at his wrist - which was, of course, utterly devoid of a watch. "Oh, look at that, we're both teenage boys still. Thank God, I'd hate to let blowing a trucker for nudey-mags go to waste." Huffing a laugh through his nose, Richie took the opportunity to swipe the magazine out of Eddie's grip in the wake of his shock, smoothing it down a bit before he unfolded the plastic lip. The things Eddie Kaspbrak would believe.

"You're so pretty when you blush, Eds. Almost makes me jealous."  _ Almost  _ was not quite powerful enough, actually, if only because half the shit that came out of Richie's mouth had once been geared toward  _ making _ Eddie blush. But then, it was probably his own fault that his boyfriend was so accustomed to those sorts of things being said. Maybe visual was the way to go now.    


"Jealous?" he echoed, as if that was the least sensical thing Richie had said, out of a lot of nonsensical things. "Richie, we're dating for crying out loud." With a huff and an eye-roll, Eddie climbed back onto his bed, the dance party long over. 

"Fine. Let's see what we've got here." Much more gently, Eddie moved both hands to take the plastic-covered issue, bumping and brushing knuckles on his way to pull it out of the sleeve. "Bet you five bucks there's a lumberjack pin-up."   
  
"I'll take that bet only because I want to watch you find it," Richie retorted primly, his chin tipped up in some (subtle, affectionate) mockery of the smaller brunet's best haughty expression. His recently released hand grew cool without slightly damp fingers clamped around it, so he shoved it under his own leg and leaned to look over Eddie's shoulder as they leafed through the magazine. 

At least staring at the pictures from beyond the barrier of glossy printed paper meant Richie had an advantage over the plethora of super hot men - the ability to touch Eddie - which he did - laying a hand on his fleece-clad thigh and shifting his arm around the curve of his butt where it rested on the mattress. As if the half-dressed models needed reminding that he was taken.    
  
"The cocks don't come out until the centerfold," he mentioned idly, gaze ghosting over the poses wrought with well-oiled, well-defined muscles.    


"This is dumb," Eddie proclaimed, settled into the curve of Richie's body, bent over the side of the bed as they were. He motioned toward the greased up image of an underdressed firefighter, as if he were some suburban dad balking at an article in the morning paper. "They don't even look real. People don't look like this. It’s false advertising.”

"They're not s'pose to look real, Eds," Richie answered, mildly pleased that his boyfriend was unimpressed by the miles of glistening caramel skin and taunt muscles that graced every page. A laugh escaped him (quiet, by all standards - the trashmouth wasn't going to trade all this for a tongue-lashing from Mrs. K after all) at the  _ tsk  _ noise Eddie made at the first naked ass.    
  
"Whatsamatter, hairy balls not doin’ it for ya?" Richie asked, lifting his hand from Eddie's leg just long enough to wriggle his finger tip over the almost blurred print of dark hair in the vee of cowboy thighs. Dropping his hand back down, Richie slid a little higher than he had been resting, fingers curling around the bow of warm pajama bottoms where real thigh met real groin (though there was enough extra space to hide whether his boyfriend was truly unimpressed or not.    
  
"Or you just not into butts?" Richie added, not quite able to swallow his own laughter on that final syllable.    


"I'm into butts!" Eddie insisted, as if his very sexuality was being questioned. "I'm just not into butts this overly shiny. A butt does not need to be that slicked up.” He grunted in discontent and flipped through the next couple of pages, staring, grimacing, or accomplishing some combination of the two, at the sight of well hung cocks and tight asses.

"So I'm guessing you don't wanna come to my inevitable oil-wrestling competitions," Richie murmured dryly, burying his face in Eddie's shoulder for a moment before he wrinkled his nose on a sniff, and went back to watching the pages curve and fold and flop under a precise and careful thumb. 

He should almost have been disappointed that his plan to get his boyfriend all riled up hot and bothered in bed had been foiled by that very same boyfriend's apparent pornographic preferences - or whatever the opposite of preferences were, but mostly Richie was tickled that all that was, in fact, the opposite of his preferences.    


"Look, flannel-plus-beard counts as lumberjack, I'm pretty sure. Though I'd be more concerned with accidentally castrating myself if I were a lumberjack dressed like that."

"He's not even holding an ax! And it's inside, by a fireplace. Lumberjacks belong in the woods, with trees! Al Borland wears flannel and a beard all the time and he's not a lumberjack. He's a handy-man."

“Forget five dollars, then. Two-fifty.”

“Two-fifty for a  _ handyman _ .”

"This is stupid!" Eddie exclaimed. "See, this is why teenagers and creeps read porn, ‘cause they can't get any. I've got a horny boyfriend, I don't need..." Floundering, Eddie picked up the magazine again. " _ Corey Peters Cocky Jock Strap Pix _ ? Ew, what the fuck?"

Pinching his lips into a straight line, Richie fought huffs of laughter, eyes on Eddie's face even as he watched every movement in his peripherals. The next time the magazine hit the pillow, he was distracted from putting it away by a lap full of soft chestnut hair, Eddie situating himself to lie there. 

"You trying to tell me something, Richie?" Eddie asked. "I don't think I can get that buff by the end of the summer but I can probably sneak downstairs and grab some vegetable oil from the pantry."   
  
Despite the cold dread suffusing Riche at certain words Eddie appeared to be quite comfortable throwing around, he carded his hands through the soft brown hair instead, an ample distraction.

"Aw, Eds," he murmured, smoothing down one cheek to cup fingers along the point of Eddie's jaw. A brush of his thumb was enough to get dark eyes flicked up toward him instead. "I can't condone turning down an opportunity to see you slicked up like buttered pancakes. But if you get any prettier, I'll die of brain damage from the constant change in blood pressure. Or my dick will explode. Nobody wants an exploded dick. It's pretty hard to keep it together already." 

"Ugh, shut up," Eddie groaned, tipping his head in the opposite direction.

“Yes dear.”

Eventually Eddie grew bored and rolled off, out of the way of Richie's hands, to browse the assortment of Tozier-owned schnapps bottles. Stretched out on his tummy in soft clothes wasn't a bad alternative, and the taller brunet was pretty quick to scoot himself closer, tempted to smack that round bottom like a set of bongos.   
  
"What'd you say this was again?" Eddie asked uncapping one of the bottles to take a whiff. His face twisted indicatively. "Nail polish remover?"

"Schnapps," Richie answered, bending down just long enough to set his teeth into one plump fleece-clad cheek. He threw himself down beside Eddie before recompense could be stolen with the swing of a hand, bouncing the bed and nearly spilling the little container in the meanwhile.    
  
"That one is green apple, this one's peach," Richie mumbled, plucking them up one at a time. "I think the clear one is mint and the pink ones are either like, watermelon, or cinnamon." 

"Watermelon and cinnamon are very different." Eddie dropped the green one he'd picked up, taking the peach instead. 

“Yeah, you’d think they’d make ‘em different colors, ”Richie mumbled absently, plucking up one of the pink ones for a quick sniff before he opened it to take a sip - choking only because he laughed when Eddie spluttered at his first taste.   


"Mixers only for you, huh?" he teased, wondering if Kool-aid should have been on his list of provisions. Flopping onto his back to keep their shoulders touching, Richie tipped the cinnamon flavored bottle up again, tongue playing against his lips as he hissed in a breath.

"If you were smart, you would have waited to look at porn until after I was drunk," Eddie managed, already going for another sip, despite the bitter look on his face.   
  
"Well, we can always revisit Corey Peter’s jockstrap," Richie mentioned, knowing already that he didn't really want that. Eddie had been pretty clear about not wanting it either, though the trashmouth was quite aware of the difference some liquor could make to certain attitudes.   
  
"Or we could make our own," Richie continued, not bothering to process the thought before it came out of his mouth.   


Eddie paused, mouth puckered around his chosen bottle. Only to pop off, and turn his judgemental gaze on Richie. 

“Make our own jockstraps?”

Moments away from asking if Eddie wanted his out of paper mache or duct tape, Richie’s intended suggestion rumbled out of pretty lips with all the gung-ho excitement of frozen fish sticks.

“You want to make porn.” 

"I'm  _ suggesting _ we make porn," Richie corrected him, because arguing semantics was the fastest way to tilt blame away from himself - as if that was the most pressing issue. "Nothing fancy. You still got a Polaroid around here somewhere, right? I dunno if Mike will let us borrow his camera." 

Brainstorming was as easy and shameless as any group project in science class. Posing naked for his boyfriend wasn't all that different from diorama building, after all. As far as labor and supplies were concerned.   


Eddie turned forward and let his chin sink against the edge of the mattress. Richie could only imagine the visuals his mind might be vying to concoct. Whatever it was, Eddie must have given up, as he sighed and closed his eyes a moment later. 

"If I had pictures of a naked guy laying around, they'd have to come with me to school," he muttered. "Because you know my mom is gonna search my room the minute I'm gone. And if someone finds them at school, I'm gonna get beat up. Which I don’t want."

"You're right," Richie murmured, a little more congratulatory than defeated as he finished off the cinnamon, capping the bottle before tossing it in the general direction of his bag. There was basically a guarantee of a thorough inventory before he left anyway. No evidence. No witnesses. Well, one witness.   
  
"Guess you'll have to pose instead," he added, a little more resigned as he smirked, head tipping to look at the blurred line of Eddie's profile beyond the harsh line of his glasses.

Eddie wrinkled his nose in disdain. Gearing up for a debate, Richie waited for the shoe to drop, but his boyfriend remained silent, thoughtful. Probably deciding the meanest way to let him down. Ah well, maybe next time. 

Only that wasn’t what Eddie did at all. Instead, he lifted his head, pinning Richie with warm eyes, and the softest question he had probably ever heard.

“Do you want that?”

Turning his head until his glasses brought Eddie into view fully, the trashmouth stared into those honey eyes, vulnerable and inviting in a way that only Eddie could be, simultaneously warning, threatening. A venus fly trap. And Richie was the poor damned fly who couldn’t help himself.   
  
"Yes," he answered finally, his choked off syllable just barely managing to sound resolute and almost incredulous that such a question would ever be asked. Even if Eddie wasn't taking off for school in a matter of weeks, ready to explore the world and build his real grown up life. Even if they weren't going to go months or years without seeing each other after a decade of almost every day. 

Even if he wasn't a little bit terrified that not being able to remember what their voices used to sound like meant he wouldn't remember a lot of things before he was ready.   
  
"My parents don't give a shit, I doubt they'll even clean my room out before they die. And I'm not going to school. I'll keep 'em in a lock box with a ten digit combination. Plus photography is like, almost immortality. You'll be eighteen and naked forever."   


Moving to sit, Eddie downed the rest of his tiny liquor bottle, wincing when it hit him a little funny. He burped with his mouth closed, fist pressed to his lips, and even that managed to be unbearably adorable on him.   


"Stay here, don't make any noise," he told Richie, pointing his finger toward the trashmouth's chest. "I have to grab the camera from downstairs." And probably lie to Sonia, if it came down to it. Richie lifted his arms in surrender, pantomiming a zipper across his lips as he pressed them into a tight line and shook his head. 

Watching in absolute stillness, breath held like he was superstitious for as long as it took Eddie to slip out the door, Richie couldn't quite justify moving a muscle. Any creak of the bed or floor would be investigated for as long as the overprotected son was downstairs.

Somehow, he had successfully convinced his crotchety boyfriend to take nudey pics. He convinced  _ Eddie Kaspbrak  _ to take nudey pics. Unless he was running downstairs to alert the warden and kick the creepy voyeur out of his life once and for all. But blood was rushing to several parts of Richie’s body, and he didn’t want to think about that alternative. 

It was a gut wrenching couple of minutes before Richie heard footsteps on the stairs, his ears all but tipping toward the door - managing for a moment to lose his confidence in how obvious the difference in the sound of Eddie versus Mrs. K walking down the hallway would be. Just as he began to debate the merit of scrambling under the bed, or dragging the comforter over his head (the closet was basically out of the question from this angle), the door gapped just enough to let Eddie slip back inside, and Richie sagged like a hot air balloon with relief.   


Eddie locked the door behind him, presenting the Polaroid camera like the Christ child Himself. "Here, I don't know how much film is in there but we haven't used it since last Christmas, so. Do you know what you're doing? All you have to do was click a button.” One hand passed the camera over, and the other started yanking at his own T-shirt.

"Non, monsieur, je ne sais rien," Richie recited wryly, sitting up quickly when the camera was tossed at him. Fiddling with the thing took a backseat to staring when Eddie's shirt came over his head - as if he had never seen that before. It was certainly for a new reason though, and the trashmouth wasn't going to miss a moment of  _ Eddie is stripping for me to photograph _ . It could almost make a guy take up art.   
  
"Hey, leave your pants on for the first one," Richie murmured, as if suddenly having a camera and a plan vamped up their chances of being caught. By ironic universe standards, it probably did.   
  
"Here." Taking Eddie's hand, the brunet pulled him across the bed, head just shy of the pillows and rucked up comforter pillowing against the lines of his legs and shoulders. Richie's fingers curled into the fleece pajama bottoms for a moment, tugging them down until the curve of Eddie's ass was just barely exposed, and managed to tip him up onto one side as his leg shifted knee over knee.   
  
"Now do something with your face," Richie teased, nearly whispering as he lifted his glasses into his hair and set his eye against the viewer.

Edde scowled back at him, curled over his bed like the much older male pinup counterpart of the Coppertone girl. Too bad he was allergic to dogs. “Does this count as something?”

"It's certainly something," Richie answered, voice laced with the affection that squeezed his ribs as he struggled to get his pointer finger on the button without losing his lineup. A snap sounded right before the grinding shutter, and for a moment all the fearless jackass could do was hold his breath and listen for any sign that it was loud enough to draw attention - only to be distracted by the photo that spit out the front like an impudent tongue.   
  
"Alright, get naked for me," Richie whispered, blood rushing with an anticipation that gripped him by the balls and throat while his hand whipped the photo back and forth to help it develop.

With some huffing and grumbling, Eddie straightened out so he could slide off his bottoms, wiggling against the mattress. Stepping to the side a bit, Richie watched his shadow shift across the bed and Eddie's flattened form, legs shifting to escape the fleece before it finally fell to the floor. The long summer day wasn't quite close enough to ending to be turning colors yet, but the soft gold filtered through the leaves gave a warm haze to everything, including all the cream and brown tones that made up Eddie Kaspbrak.   
  
Camera pressed to his face again, Richie snapped a second photo just as Eddie's head tipped up toward him. Richie's shadow fell across his subject - head and shoulders outlined on the wall behind him. 

"By the way, if any of the others get their hands on these or hear it even happened, I'm gonna wring your neck," Eddie warned, not quite so threatening with his dick hanging out.   
  
"Will I survive? ‘Cause that sounds kinda sexy," Richie teased in reply, letting his glasses slip down as he peeked over the camera to get a real look.   
  
“You’ll be too dead to enjoy it!”

Richie shook out some prints while Eddie settled himself, still visibly ruffled from head to toe. The last thing he wanted was for his boyfriend not to enjoy this - but then, he had been the one to jump up and get the camera. 

"Make me laugh," Eddie said, bending up on his elbows. "I must look stupid pouting like this."

"You never look stupid pouting like this," Richie countered simply, resolute as he grinned impishly and moved closer. Still, the trashmouth could hardly consider himself an entertainer if he couldn't make his own boyfriend laugh on command.   
  
"Alright Eds, how does Moses make tea?" he asked primly, smiling about his own joke before it was out - or maybe that was the fizzy pop feeling in his gut that got stronger every time Eddie looked at him. "He brews!"

Richie was the one who wound up laughing, face pinched and shoulders curled to keep himself something resembling quiet while his boyfriend glared at him like he had grown a second head.

"You used that on Stanley yesterday," Eddie stated. “And we didn’t laugh then, either.”

"Okay, okay, I got one," Richie started. "So, a golfer is on tour in Ireland, driving a shiny BMW because he can, and pulls over for gas between one course and another. There's an old Irish man in a beat up truck on the other side when the golfer gets out to pump his gas. He drops his wallet and bends down to pick it up, and two golf tees fall out of his breast pocket. As he's picking them up, the Irish man asks, 'What are those for?'” One of Richie's best voices, if you asked him. "And the golfer says 'they're for resting my balls when I drive.' The Irish man gives him this look and then he goes, 'Fuck me, BMW tinks of everytin!'"   


Once again, Eddie just stared after the punchline, accent and all, offering a blank look. At least it wasn't scowling.

A moment later, Eddie groaned, throwing himself back onto his comforter, arms crossed over his eyes while he snorted and scoffed derisively. "This is stupid!"

"You're killin' me, Eds," Richie whined, snapping another photo without even looking through the viewer (his aim hadn't changed after all) and hopefully capturing the entirety of his boyfriend tossed across the bed like a desolate angel in a Renaissance painting. Whipping that one out of the shutter as well, the tall brunet shook all three of them as he turned to sit on the end, pushing Eddie's feet out of the way with his butt.    


“I’m terrible at this. I need at least a couple years at porn modeling school.”

"Maybe you'll feel more professional if your dick is hard," Richie suggested, almost feigning innocence while his face flushed with the excitement that zipped through his body like a Tron bike. Setting aside the photos just to free up a hand, he walked his fingers up Eddie's shin, tickling him behind the knee. "Want me to help?"    


Eddie lifted his arms over his head, hiking his leg out of the way. "There's a fine line between artsy and trashy. If I'm hard, it's gonna be trashy, and then I'm just gonna be sitting here with a boner while you get your jollies behind the camera."

"Yeah, what's wrong with that?" Richie asked, grinning impishly as he chased Eddie's leg with wriggling fingers, only to settle as his hand came to rest on an ankle, squeezing reassuringly. The heat in his own cheeks seemed to have suffused the entirety of his boyfriend's body, chest and tummy as beet red as his cheeks and nibbled lips.    
  
"These are for me, not for some gallery. And I'm already trashy. Here." Holding the camera out to be taken, the brunet advanced a bit, a hand supporting him on the mattress between Eddie's thighs as he flattened himself out. It put him at chin level with a bony hip.    
  
"How am I gonna masturbate to your naughty pictures if it looks like I stole your clothes while you were swimming?" Richie teased, dipping his head low enough to let his lips brush against the soft velvet of Eddie's dick, tilting just enough to get a look through his glasses at his boyfriend's face. 

Eddie stared at him, at least not so unamused, like before. His interest swelled right under Richie’s lips.

"Don't make me louder than Jeopardy," Eddie uttered on a shaky breath, clutching the camera against his collarbone as if it might settle him.   


A huffed laugh escaped Richie while he tried not to grin so much that he made his mouth useless. Brows rising, he tipped his head as if to contemplate the potential, hands sliding up the covers until he could slip beneath Eddie's thighs for the warmth of the grip.    
  
"I dunno," he murmured, "we might have to find a way to muffle you." Nose pressed against the already hardening shaft, Richie set his mouth against the curve of the joint where inner thigh became groin, nibbling on hot skin before turning his head just enough to slip up the side of Eddie's dick, getting spit-slick lips around the head a moment later.    
  
The slow slide nudged the mushroom cap against the roof of his mouth, bowing slowly back toward his throat as Richie sank down, fearless and unhesitant and utterly enjoying every shuddering breath-held moment that Eddie was caught in his grip. His boyfriend sighed out any bated breath that might have better suited a moan, tipping his chin toward his collarbone - knocking his jaw into the camera.

Glancing up at the sudden sound of the snapshot was probably the best thing Richie had done today, if only because it meant catching that perfect moment (with his eyes, not the camera) on Eddie's face. A shocked, wide expression coupled with an entire face flushed hot and deep. The trashmouth couldn't quite decide whether it was good or bad that the cause was probably embarrassment - this time, or any time. Eddie was arguably very easy to embarrass, or at least rile up, and it was sometimes hard to tell the difference.    
  
"Don't break it," Richie warned, a smug smile pulling at his lips as he pushed himself up and back, hand reaching to stroke up Eddie's dick before it could go lax again. Tugging the picture free of the camera's mouth, he glanced at the still-too-faded gray, only to shake it wildly before he dropped it with the others.    
  
"Scoot back against the headboard, like into that corner." Pointing, nudging, taking the camera back before Eddie could waste another roulette-chamber on their ambiguously limited film, Richie adjusted his own stiffy in his pajama pants, and wondered if he should be asking any deities to make sure he didn't run out of film too early.

"Tip your head against your fist," he added, reaching forward to place Eddie's elbow on the pillows. His subject sighed and complied, still ruffled, tipping his eyes toward the ceiling.

The whole of Richie’s attention focused on the shadows in Eddie's eyes below the bow of his brow, the divots and dimples around his arms, chest, hips, knees, and ankles. The way that his own shadow still fell across Eddie while seated on the bed, even if it was just the shins. It was a little like being in the photo with him, a stamp of his existence in Eddie's life permanently recorded. More intimate and secret than anything the Losers Club had done together.    
  
"Look at me," Richie murmured, a little more demanding than his other instructions had been. "You remember that time I got stuck upside down on that rope swing because I stuck my leg all the way through it?" Tone casual, he did little more than adjust his seat on the bed, one hand out to support him as he leaned back, eyes soft while he stared at the pink cheeks beneath honey gold eyes that had been turned black by either shadows or arousal. Even with Eddie’s entire naked form on display for him.

"Yes," Eddie said, as if he were speaking to the camera. "I remember. I couldn’t tell if you were screaming or laughing. It was terrifying." He shifted a little further toward his fist, mouth tight with the slightest twinge of a smile. Just enough to have Richie grinning smugly. Though the grin could just as easily be blamed on the memory as well. It had, after all, been completely hilarious. One of his better stunts, inspired by little more than the resident worrywart's warning not to do exactly that.

"I got rope burn from knee to ankle," Richie told him, as if he didn't know, and lifted his leg just enough to demonstrate with a pointed finger. "I think the first time you actually gave me a boner, directly I mean, was applying that stupid cream that you pulled out of your backpack." Fannypack two-point-oh, but even the trashmouth wasn't going to mention that. Not after the fall out and certainly not when he was trying to make Eddie smile.    
  
"The best part, though, was watching Bill and Mike smack face-first into each other trying to get down the hill to rescue me. I'd pay to watch that again, just once. Hell, I'd pay them to do it."   


"I'm always cleaning up after you chuckleheads!" Eddie groaned, as if the annoyance was fresh, and not years old. Team Doctor and Team Mom, all in the same breath. "They needed ice packs, you needed ointment, you guys are lucky I'm around." He shifted a little, his butt sliding against the comforter as his legs moved to a new position - raging boner still on full display.   
  
"Richie Tozier's hot and bothered about fourteen year old boys, huh?" Eddie teased, all of a sudden, biting his lip, unable to stop his smile from spreading.

The camera snapped and shuttered between them even as Richie's brows rose, chest and shoulders swelling with the breath prepared to defend himself. Which cosmic beings did he have to beg that the photo captured Eddie's gaze lifted into the warm dregs of sunshine, teeth pinching a plump little lip while he fought a smile? Someone give him a list for fuck's sake.    
  
" _ Was _ ,"  Richie declared, not quite affronted as he plucked the photo from the camera's mouth, fanning himself with it before dropping it with the others - which were in various stages of color already.  "I'm pretty sure fourteen-year-old boys are allowed to get hot and bothered by other fourteen-year-old boys, especially when they have spindly little fingers smearing cooling cream over hypersensitive wounds. That's some nurse and soldier shit, to be honest, you're lucky I didn't marry you right then and there."    
  
Rolling up onto his knees, the tall brunet stuck the camera up under his glasses again, aligning it with his eye long enough to see how far he had to be to get the whole photo. Distance made Eddie smaller in the picture, less details visible as they were developing,  but it was nice to get as much of everything as he could.    
  
"Lay back," Richie murmured, reaching a bit blindly to feel for the shorter brunet's leg again and half-tugging him more centered on the bed, head haloed by printed pillow cases.

"You're a regular Andy Warhol, Richie," Eddie said."Wait, did he do photos? I can't remember, I only took art to fill an elective."

"Who's Andy Warble?" Richie asked, snapping another photo just in time for Eddie's face to fall (or rather, pinch) into an expression of confused contemplation. Each time that the Polaroid actually spit out a photo instead of just gagging on its own tongue, he breathed a sigh of relief - and despite all the tension in his gut, Richie was entirely unprepared for the eventuality of it crapping out on him. There was no telling how many in the already limited roll had been used up by Sonia Kaspbrak's enthusiasm for preservation.    
  
Still on his knees, Richie half-crawled forward, nudging Eddie's legs apart enough to get between them and then continuing until he had them nearly bent up around him, warm bare thighs resting on top of his flannel pants (and for a moment, he wished he was naked too). Eddie was still hard enough to sit upright, though it seemed unlikely that this camera would ever manage to capture the champagne pink flush of his skin, turned candle-light gold by the fading sunlight.    
  
Reaching with one hand, Richie closed his fingers in a loose curl around Eddie's dick, thumbing the flared head at the seam just as the camera snapped again - startling him, considering he had forgotten where his trigger finger was for a moment. In front of him, Eddie gasped.   
  
"Lick your lips, Eds," Richie whispered, tongue heavy and throat tight.    


Eddie glanced up, eyes molten, mouth rosy and bitten to hell. He’d probably sooner need some lip balm than his own spit. Nevertheless, he acquiesced, little tongue sticking out to glide between his chapped lips.

“Like this, Rich?”

Rather than relinquish either of his grips, Richie let the picture hang loosely from the camera's mouth, flapping around to the rhythm of his heart beat, considering how still both of them had fallen. His finger tightened again, and the photo fell out of the way of the next one, landing lazily on the mattress beside them.    
  
"Juslikethat," Richie answered, breathless, swallowing thickly and trying to remember suddenly where he had been going with that, only for a third photo to snap and shutter out of the abused camera clenched in his grip - fingers aching and knuckles white. Scared to miss it, the brunet dropped the camera and blinked as his glasses fell down to bump against his nose, just in time.    
  
All at once, Richie fell forward, one hand caught on the bed above Eddie's head - camera safely out of the way there - and the other tightening his grip on the hard cock already nestled in his fingers as his head dipped to chase a taste of that peeking pink tongue. A gasp gave him unfettered access as he swept inside, head tipping to seal them together, only to retreat a moment later and dive down, seeking the soft, warm skin of throat and collarbone. 

"Richie," Eddie puffed, arms coming around his neck. Humming an answer (just as curious as it was affirmative) against that supple neck, Richie shifted lower only because he was smart enough to be able to imagine the consequences of bruises appearing on the hypochondriac's throat the same day his mother kept him home for sniffles - never mind what Eddie would do to him for it. 

Sliding lower, Richie nipped and sucked on the curve of his collarbone, the smooth and subtle curve of his chest, ghosting hot breath over a nipple before his mouth suctioned down on it like an octopus with a jar. Just tall enough to be bowed around his boyfriend, the brunet stretched his spine a bit further simply to hoist Eddie's hips up, shoving the twitching shaft into the swell of his palm while his fingers flexed and stroked the length of him. 

Not quite ready to relinquish his entire grip on the camera, or the balance that arm allotted him, Richie sat back on his heels when he was near enough to feel the heat of Eddie's ass against his own groin, hand twisting to skate past tightened balls toward the hot crevice beneath with two fingers - slicked by little more than a dribble of precum and the anxious warmth of their bodies, moans bubbling out of his boyfriend all the while.    
  
"Fuck," Richie grunted helplessly, lifting his head to abandon the pebbled back-arching nub and sink into the wet warmth of Eddie's mouth again, noises collapsing against his lips. At this rate, he was going to soil his pajamas on nothing more than the fucking knowledge that Eddie Spaghetti was naked underneath him and shuddering apart from his touch. 

His mouth fell open against Eddie's when nimble fingers began to palm at tension between his legs, their teeth clicking almost painfully together as a gusty gasp forced out of Richie's lungs. Light headed, limbs jellied, it was some miracle of self control (or maybe just stubbornness) that he didn't launch over the edge right then. 

By all accounts, though, he was still a man on a mission.   
  
"Come on, Eds," Richie whispered, ragged and drowning in his own inability to inhale. "Gimme it, cum for me." Much as he wanted it to be a command, the trashmouth could hear the plea in his own voice, halfway to shattering himself and desperate to last. Hell, biting his own cheek didn't work. His hand slid lower, middle finger marking the target as he slid across it in all its fluttering glory, forearm bent against the underside of the twitching, dribbling dick between them.   


"Oh, god." Eyes fluttering shut, Eddie's head tipped back against Richie's face, uttering breathy nonsense as his orgasm finally exploded out of him, coating thighs and belly and whatever else was close enough to touch. He squeezed his arms around Richie's neck, a cinched vise.   


A pleased gasp turned chuckle fell out of Richie’s slack and useless jaw the moment wet splattered the side of his arm, dripping down toward his hand while his fingers stilled in the tense crevice they had wriggled into. He lifted his head just enough to watch Eddie's expression unfold.   
  
Fully intending to get a photo of just that, the trashmouth pressed up, jizz-hand shifting to hold his weigh. Eddie trembled against him like a snare drum.   
  
"One more, Eds," he murmured, pressing himself up in a bid for release, despite the war between head and body over whether he wanted released or not. The grip broke, though, limp arms falling to either side, fingers curled loosely and Eddie's heavy eyes trying to glare at him ineffectually while his ravished mouth sucked in air.   
  
Richie didn't delay then, drawn to the sight as he was, and leaned back as his camera arm came up - fingers a little stiff from the unrelenting grip. The lens had barely made it against his cheek before the shutter clicked under his touch, photo spitting out as he lined up for a second - because that one was obviously going to be blurry - only to be met with the empty sound of a finished cartridge.

"Bastard's dozen," Richie murmured, resigned as he folded the camera closed and collected his final bounty. Maybe if he had been a good boy this year, it would come out clear enough (in which case, the trashmouth was probably fucked).

Eddie began to laugh, giggling like an idiot into the pillow under his head. "You better give me the money to buy more film," he mumbled against the cushiony material, "or do it yourself, because I don't want to explain to my mom when she finds it..." It was a half-baked statement at best, but who could expect a brain to work in the aftermath of such a good orgasm?

Richie grinned, hand flicking to develop the final photo, fully intending to indulge every available moment of  _ this _ . "Ya wanna get paid for yer pitchers, Eddie bear?" he asked coyly (and still painfully hard). Leaning back, he set the last Polaroid down with the others before he flopped forward, chin on Eddie's chest and hands wriggling between soft, sweat damp skin and warmed cotton.   
  
"I'll buy you allllllll the film," he declared softly, resolute. He’d just have to remember to do it soon. Otherwise, Eddie would be too far away to buy him much of anything.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a tone change ahead. You have been warned.

"Did you bring a change of pants?" Richie asked, sounding a little more affronted than necessary. "Who wears tight pants to a puffn’stuff? Your ass isn't allowed to look that good when I'm driving."

"Listen, Bill isn't the only one who's never smoked," Eddie griped, only to realize there was probably no correlation but the one Richie decided to conjure up in his crazy head. He didn't even need to defend himself - and yet. Luckily the cab of the truck was just dark enough to hide his embarrassed blush, even when he leaned across Beverly to kiss Richie on the cheek and pull the door closed behind him.    
  
"Don't worry, my ass will be sitting, so you won't have to look at it."

"That's not better,” Richie grumbled, kicking into a higher gear as soon as Eddie was buckled. “Who told you that was better?"   
  
Trying not to let his mom know where he was going and  _ why _ should have been easy, but of course Eddie had to shit and shake all day, as if she knew that evening he'd be off to do drugs where no one should ever do drugs, especially not teenagers. Maybe it was a dumb idea. It usually was. But he had enough Febreeze in his backpack to get him through the night. As if he might have forgotten (he'd checked seven times), he smoothed a hand over the big pocket, immediately put at ease by the solid feeling of the spray bottle.

All Eddie could do on the ride over was drum anxiously. Either on his knee, or the window, or the dashboard. Whenever his hands got tired, there was another surface to occupy his antsy fingers. He knew better, even in the face of paranoia, but it sure seemed like every car that passed knew what they were up to. Why did he agree to this? Probably because Bill had. Once Bill signed off on something, all bets were off.   


Rumbling to a stop a few feet inside a tree line, Richie lifted off the seat to get the parking brake down, and hopped out just in time for Mike to appear, toting a picnic basket, of all things. Richie slapped the bench seat a couple times to get Eddie and Bev moving before slamming the door. 

The shorter brunet couldn't help a furtive glance when he got out, as if a cop might jump out of the treeline at any moment to arrest them all, and then they would never be able to go to college and get jobs.   
  
"We waiting here or down the hill?" Richie asked, hand in Eddie's back pocket as soon as he was close enough. It was at least a good excuse to lean against his beanpole boyfriend.

"Down the hill, please? We look too suspicious," Eddie answered before anyone else could, glancing toward the road again.   
  
"Relax, we won't get caught," Beverly assured him (though Eddie couldn't decide if the veteran act was comforting or just condescending). "I've been smoking in the school for years, no one cares."   
  
"Well I care!" Eddie stated, dragging Richie with them toward the slope of the hill.   


“Hang on, my hand’s still trapped on your butt!”

The other three arrived in a cluster, toting a whole comforter full of choice drinks and tasty cakes, collected since the casual suggestion had evolved into actual plans. By the time the fire really caught, the blanket had been spread out and a pipe packed for the initiation. It was enough to make Eddie feel rescued from the delinquents, despite the preparations going on right beside him between Beverly’s and Richie’s hands. 

It just wasn't fair; Beverly and Richie could smoke up a supply closet and then waltz into class and ace a test, but even with his uptight regimen Eddie still had trouble pulling over eighty percent in algebra. Maybe they studied while they got high, but he sincerely doubted it.   
  
Whatever, that was over now. In a few weeks he'd be at a school that didn't care what grade he got as long as he passed. It was a comfort, even in the face of the glum reality of it all. Especially when he looked across the fire at Bill.

"Who wants greens?" Richie asked with a grin, a pipe in his teeth before Beverly plucked it free.   


"Greens?" Eddie repeated, eyes narrowing in confusion, sitting pretty (and prepared) with a bottle of water. "Is that different from the regular stuff? Or do you mean something else."

"It means first hit," Beverly answered helpfully, tipping the pipe up to see.    
  
"There's no hint of shit-coated cock, yet," Richie added in a matter of fact tone, rifling through his pockets for a lighter, flicking it twice before tossing it in the air like a coin, caught in one palm and slapped down onto the other arm.   
  
"You familiar with that?" Stan asked from across the fire, sounding more concerned than disgusted.   
  
"Wouldn't you like to know," the trashmouth mumbled, huffing a laugh. "Bev's dude says it's gravy anyway but I prefer the taste of good ol' fashioned Chef Boy Ed-dee."   


"So soap and sunscreen only," Ben chuckled. Eddie missed the days when their big beautiful boy was pure and chaste.

"Wouldn't you like to know!" he shot out in reply, and everyone had a good laugh for a little while.

With the fire crackling and the rest of the circle acting like a bunch of scaredy cats, there wasn't much left to do but make a decision - either take the pipe or stay silent with the rest of them.   
  
"Well, I  _ don’t _ like shit-coated cock," Eddie said finally, knowing it would be better if he just got it over with as soon as possible. Turning to Beverly, he crooked his fingers in the direction of the pipe stuffed with smelly plant stuff. "Gimme. What do I do?"   


She seemed perfectly happy to help him along, only for Richie to derail her trajectory on its way past, taking the pipe between his and Eddie’s fingers. Seemed kind of rude, but Bev didn't seem to care, so Eddie just tried to pretend he wasn't about to defile his lungs.

"That end goes in your mouth," Richie started, deadpan and informative. "Fire here, breathe in slow and hold."   
  
"Keep the lighter tipped down, it tastes better," Bev mentioned, a knowing smile on her face.   
  
"You don't need a whole breath either, a little goes a long way, just like you," Richie added in a pointless stage whisper, nudging Eddie with his elbow.

Listening to direction, Eddie took the lighter, and put the end of the pipe against his mouth, looking down his nose at the other end as he struggled to flick a fire to life - his hands were shaking, but he tried to play it off. When he finally got a little flame going, he tipped it where Richie told him, hoping to god in heaven that he didn't burn his fingernail off in the process. He didn't, but it took a hell of a long time to get the little pocket of weed smoking.   
  
Glancing at Richie to make sure he was doing it right (quietly glad that he had taken over after all), Eddie breathed, nice and slow, until something rough and tingly hit the back of his throat. He pulled off, and inevitably coughed a couple of times into his sleeve, praying his asthma wasn't about to make this a nightmare.   


Richie caught the pipe and Eddie's hand on its way down, smoothing down the shaking back comfortingly. Mike took the pipe after that, and it started around the circle.

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" Richie asked, head tipped forward. Eddie stopped coughing after the first dozen or so, grateful that he didn’t have to drag out his inhaler. Richie's face loomed in his peripherals, probably pleased beyond measure that his party-pooper boyfriend had indulged a vice.   
  
"I mean, I didn't die like I thought I would," Eddie answered, voice tight, and another cough fell out of him. It was mostly over then, and the burning itch in the back of his throat started to fade by the time he decided to lean his head against Richie's shoulder, watching Mike go on like he knew what he was doing.   
  
"I don't feel any different though."

"It'll take a moment to kick in," Richie answered, squeezing Eddie affectionately, "Gotta give those sweet delicious drug particles enough time to get all Oregon Trailed on your ass. Plus you got asthma, so your lungs are already not great at putting oxygen in blood."   
  
"Sometimes it doesn't work on the first try," Bev mentioned, legs stretching out in front of her to wiggle her feet closer to the fire.   
  
"Yeah, if you do it wrong," Richie retorted. "But we got enough to try again, no sweat."   


Eddie rolled his eyes, pulling up his legs to tuck them closer to the little huddle he had going on with Richie. The prospect of trying again was not high on the list of things he wanted to do (no pun intended), but as the sensation of smoking faded a little from his memory - and then vamped up when Stan started sputtering across the fire - eventually it seemed okay to give it another shot.   
  
The pipe wound up in his hands again at some point, for another hit that felt just as harsh as the last one, with just as much coughing. But maybe that just wasn't going to go away, since his respiratory system hated him. If it was supposed to make him sleepy, that seemed to be working, as he handed it off again, and he was glad to be leaning against Richie.   
  
"I don't think it's working," Bill said at some point, flawlessly from his side of the circle, lying with his head propped up on his hand.   
  
"Me neither," Eddie agreed quietly, sighing around the syllables.   
  
"Haha, yeah," Richie mumbled, bent back on his arm to keep his balance and Eddie’s. "You guys sound totally non-chucked."

Watching the pipe go around the circle was like witnessing a ceremony, solemn for its concentration, mindful for its uncertainty, hesitance, and resolve. Eddie watched the processes flit across his friends' faces, bathed in firelight. Smiles stretching from cocky and confident to small and resigned, eyes tinted by the thick dark night and their tiny pinpoint of flickering chemical reaction.

"Did you die, Staniel?" Richie asked, minutes after the coughing had quieted and the noise around them reduced to crickets and crackling embers. 

"Not yet," came Stan's dry reply, bent up against Mike's sturdy form - not dying, after all. It sure sounded like he had been dying a while ago, almost worse than Eddie's coughing. He wondered if Stan got used to it, if it could calm his nerves and make him mellow out.   
  
Oh no, he was starting to think like a stoner. Maybe it was working, slowly corrupting him.   
  
Eddie finished off his water bottle in record time, and crunched the plastic a little before letting it drop to his side. It was starting to cool off in the evenings out here, and he huddled closer to Richie - though constantly reminding himself in the back of his mind that any overzealous PDA would be mocked and scrutinized by their buddies.   
  
"This is boring," he said, loudly, only to be surprised by the volume of his voice. "Someone say something interesting."   
  
"I had to kill a spider today," Ben answered from some distance, prefacing, sounding like he was going to launch into a narrative.   
  
"Gross, not that interesting."   


"Why'd you have to kill it?" Beverly asked softly, less disgusted and more concerned as her head tipped up to cast a worried look at Ben's serene but wide-eyed expression.    
  
"Has anyone ever seen a baby pigeon?" Stan asked, far too serious and sincere for someone who had just choked on his own tongue for five minutes.   
  
"Oh my god, I have banana bread," Mike announced, sitting up so quickly he nearly tipped their Jew over in his rush to reach the picnic basket he had set aside. Suddenly, Richie sat up, nearly sending Eddie into a tumble. His balance was usually much better than this. Shit, maybe he  _ was  _ high.   
  
"I have an announcement," the trashmouth stated finally, lifting his hands over his bowed head, trying and failing not to nudge Eddie off of him. "The truck is in full working order, passed inspection by a professional government agent and my dad. It's even registered now."    
  
"It wasn't before?" Ben asked, sounding terrified by the notion, despite having not even set foot in the thing this summer.    
  
"Yeah, so, I'm headin' out," Richie tacked on, his arms falling into his lap with an excited shrug - a perfunctory smile on his lips. "Aimin' for New York City, then maybe Chicago. See where the interstate takes me."    


The ultimate reveal had Eddie's brows raising, stunned a little bit. Could he really be surprised, though? Richie had always dreamed of making it big out west. Who knew it wasn't a pipe dream though? Fuck, who knew he was  _ serious _ ?   
  
"The American dream," Bill said knowingly. "Sounds like a lot of gas money."   
  
"I can't blame you, though," Mike said. "Once everyone else is gone, it'll be pretty boring around here anyway.” It didn’t take much to connect the dots (even while stoned), and realize he would be the only one left in Derry by the end of it all. It was impossible not to feel guilty about that little fact.

“When are you leaving?" Beverly asked.   


"Couple o’ days. Think I'm aiming for Saturday," Richie answered, shrugging again - only for Eddie to tense. "Figure less traffic since everyone will be going out towards the country instead of toward the city for work. Dad says mid-morning is best because the commuters are out of the way and everyone else is late enough for something to rush things along. Once I get the cap on the bed, I won't even have to worry about hotels and shit, you know, just bundle up for the night. And, I got graduation money comin' out the ass. I guess the distant cousins are impressed I made it or something. So, it'll be a little bit before I start selling my body to eat."  
  
Richie laughed, but Eddie couldn’t imagine how he was even able. Months, even weeks, would have been a better answer than this. Instead, he was subject to a sentence that ended only a couple of days from now.   
  
If it wasn't for the long-winded explanations, all smiles and polite response from their resident  _ trashmouth _ , Eddie might have believed him. Fuck, thank god he didn't, as his pulse climbed back into his heart from where it lodged itself in his throat. To expel the nervous energy that built itself up in his mouth, Eddie sighed, and fixed himself against Richie again, resisting the urge to punch him in the shoulder.    
  
"Yeah, right."   
  
"I think he's serious, Eddie," Stan said, almost disbelieving in his tone. When Eddie looked up, almost everyone was trying to gauge Richie's expression from around the fire.   
  
"He's never serious!' Eddie retorted. "All you need is a big word like 'commuter' to know it's bullshit."   


"I can use big words too, Eds" Richie mentioned, lifting a hand to rub Eddie’s hair in all different directions. "If I wait too much longer, the college kids will take all the jobs and parking spots. Gotta get myself out there before all this-” he continued, gesturing dramatically toward his whole self, "is lost to the ages. Don't wanna be Tony Soprano, catching my first job in my fifties. Gotta get in while I'm still pretty."

Frozen hesitation started to melt as realization hit, and before Eddie could reign himself in, he smacked Richie's hand away from his head, pushing himself a couple feet away just so he could stare. 

He was serious. Richie was  _ serious _ , even though every word out of his mouth made it sound like more of a joke. He was fucking serious.   
  
"That is...the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Eddie spat. "What are you, retarded? There's no reason for you to go until after we do."

It sounded selfish as soon as it left his mouth. But Richie was being selfish too, so Eddie didn't take it back. Ducking away, he climbed to his feet, desperate to expel nervous energy. Apparently he hadn't smoked enough to do the trick.   
  
Everyone else was just sitting there, dumb, toked-up looks on their faces. "Aren't you guys annoyed about this?!" Eddie demanded, pacing back and forth in the little space allotted to him.   
  
"It's n-not like we're not doing the same thing, Eddie," Bill managed, when no one else spoke, shrugging uselessly.   
  
"That's different! At least we got to know months in advance!"   


"Yeah," Richie murmured behind him, deadpan all of a sudden. "Gotta love having months. Sorry for the short notice." His monotone could have put Stanley to shame, but before the cold it caused could creep into Eddie’s bones, he was off with something else, as if he had been chipper the whole time.  
  
"Aw Eds, what’s it matter anyway? You'll be outta here before you have a chance to miss me anyway."    


"Shut up!" Eddie snapped, gritting his teeth as he planted his feet in the grass. "Don't  _ Aw Eds  _ me, you, you-!" He swallowed, and shook his head. Not a single insult would have been good enough. He didn’t want to vocalize how couldn’t imagine  _ not  _ missing Richie. How the thought of any of them being miles away made his heart feel like it weighed twenty pounds. How he'd already anticipated tons and tons and tons of waterworks over the next couple of months. He thought they would start when Bill pulled out of his driveway for good, the first of them to go next week, but as burning built up behind his eyes, Eddie wondered if they'd start a little sooner.   
  
He could feel them staring at him, drugged-up and miserable, probably feeling sorry for him, which was the worst. But they always felt sorry for him. What else was new? Uptight Eddie Kasprak, the momma's boy who couldn't breathe right and lived up to all the G, Q, and F-word rumors.

Well, he decided, if they were going to pity, better give them something worth pitying.   
  
"This was our summer!" Eddie yelled, stooped there with his hands balled tight in front of his eyes. "All of ours, one last hurrah, and the hurrah's not over yet, but you're just cutting it short! And you and me Richie, you and me, it was supposed to be  _ ours _ too, the two of us together! I told you three months, and you're cutting it short, just waiting until the last minute like you always do! I mean we haven't even-!" He stopped again, arms clutched toward his neck.  _ They hadn't even had sex yet _ , but hell if he was gonna let that slip in front of the losers. What had seemed so important to take slow at the beginning of the summer suddenly felt smothering under the realization that they had wasted all their time.

Shoving to his feet, Richie took hold of Eddie’s hands. He stiffened, resisting feebly, unable to stop Richie from folding into his arms, cheek to cheek, both their breath harsh. Hugging it out wasn't going to fix anything, it never did. It was just a bandaid to prod at until you were a weeping little mess of sadness that couldn't be covered up as easily.   


"You plannin' on breakin’ up with me, Eddie?" Richie asked so fucking softly, trying to tease but sounding terrified instead. Eddie could feel him trembling. "I mean I don't wanna get between you and college dick but damn honey at least let me down easy."

Eddie blinked the first couple tears down into the corners of his mouth, which tightened and quivered, as his hands fisted into Richie's sweatshirt. He shook his head, since he didn't want to hear how shrill his voice would be. He couldn't even muster the energy to be angry. Not anymore. Couldn't imagine anyone but Richie either. But try saying that to the stubborn trashmouth who had already made up his mind.   
  
"I'm really gonna miss you," he uttered, managing not to squeak, as the words shuddered out of him. "I'm gonna miss all you guys, I love you all so fucking much." 

When had leaving Derry become more important than staying together?

“I’m gonna miss you too, Eds,” Richie whispered, his grip tightening to the point where Eddie could barely breathe. For once, he didn’t want to.

A body small and soft enough that it could only be Beverly pressed into his side just before arms came around them, and Eddie shuddered, willing himself still and strong. Being a center pole meant holding up the rest of them, didn't it? Maybe he wasn't ready for that. Where was Bill?   
  
"I l-love you guys, too," There was Bill, his head coming down on Eddie's other side. Slowly, weight added to the already stifling grip they had on each other, dragging Eddie off his tip toes if he didn't want his calves straining. Stan's tawny curls loomed just under Richie's shoulder, under Eddie's nose, and he felt two different hands grasping over either of his. Soon, they were a tangle of seven pairs of limbs, in different stages of weeping, some not at all and some a sniveling mess. Snot ran down Eddie's nose, and he had a feeling that he fell into the second category, as the mesh of the most cherished, amazing people in his life swayed and stumbled, as not to fall under the uneasy balance they'd created.   
  
So much for mellowing out tonight.   



	9. Epilogue

So much for sleeping, Richie mused, slipping carefully out of Eddie's bed when the glowing green numbers finally read three-oh-oh on the clock across the pillow. The room was cold, at least compared to the sheets he had just inched his way out of, and the pliant body still tucked between them. 

Richie reclaimed his bag, packed lightly with everything he had needed for what his boyfriend didn't know was their last night. After what happened at the smoke and choke campfire, even the insensitive trashmouth couldn't really justify making Eddie say goodbye, again.    
  
A sheet of his mom's floral-print shopping list note paper was just long enough to tuck snugly around the single Polaroid that he was willing to part with, of his own forehead and bangs taken from the angle of a sharp collarbone, and Richie set it on the bedside table, weighing down the corner with the alarm clock. 

By the time he hit the New Hampshire border, the sun was rising, and he couldn't quite stop himself from imagining Eddie's face when he found it, read it. Maybe crumpled it up to throw at his trash can or set on fire. Maybe he cried hard enough to wake up Sonia. Richie didn’t know which hurt less.   
  
_ Don't forget this face. You'll be seeing it again. Yours, R _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not the end of the story! Remember, this is a three part series. The next work will come out soon! Maybe some comments and kudos would encourage me to get it done faster, who knows...
> 
> Thank you so much for all the support I've already gotten too. Until next time!
> 
> EDIT: part 2 of this series is out!!! go read it! thanks so much!!!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Tin Roof Rusted](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15639483) by [Ailorian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ailorian/pseuds/Ailorian), [quixoticquest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixoticquest/pseuds/quixoticquest)




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